To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are— One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
–from Ulysses by Alfred Lord Tennyson (read by Jack Bogle at Dr. E’s Fetsival)

When Dr. E stood atop the North Tower of the World Trade Center to receive the Merrill Lynch Innovations Award for his NSF-funded physics Ph.D. dissertation titled Multiple Unit Artificial Retina Chipset to Aid the Visually Impaired and Enhanced CMOS Phototransitors, he gave the technology away freely. The NSF’s Frontiers reported, “Last spring, NSF-funded electrical engineering professor Wentai Liu and doctoral student Elliot McGucken created a microchip that will be used by the surgeons. Limited laboratory experiments have shown that this implant can expand artificial sight from the single dot in space to an array of pixels, like that of a television set. So far, the artificial retinal component chip (ARCC) has an array of 5 by 5 pixels–just enough to identify individual letters. However, Liu, of North Carolina State University, and McGucken, of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, say that in the next five years the chip will grow to a 20 by 20 array, and may eventually hold a 250 by 250 array–enough to read a newspaper.”

Popular Science: A microchip studded with tiny sensors may give sight to the blind. . . Such a device must be small and have a constant power supply. The solution: a microchip the size of a match head, embedded with photosensors and electrodes that translate light patterns into electrical currents to stimulate the ganglion cells. . . Scientists Wentai Liu and Elliot McGucken are evaluating the microchip in the lab before human testing begins. (the retina technology is now helping people see)

The retinal prosthesis is now helping the blind see. Recently, upon donating some of his fine art photography to a hospital following a successful gallery show in LA, Dr. E realized that someday soon, a patient would see one of his fine art images hanging in the hospital’s hallways with the retinal prosthesis from his physics Ph.D. dissertation. The appendix of the dissertation concerned itself with theoretical physics known as Moving Dimensions Theory–a theory born from Dr. E’s days working with the late John Archibald Wheeler at Princeton University–and Dr. E signs all of his fine art with its simple, far-reaching equation–dx4/dt=ic. In words, dx4/dt=ic stipulates that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c (the velocity of light), and that photons of light are are but momenergy that surfs this fourth expanding dimension. MDT weaves change into the foundational fabric of spacetime, and too, it provides the foundational mechanism for all motion–the fourth expanding dimension is what carries every photon along its odyssey. In his paper, “A Hero’s Odyssey with Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Planck, Einstein, Schrodinger, Bohr, and the Greats towards Moving Dimensions Theory. E pur si muove, ” Dr. E writes,

MDT provides both the “elementary foundations” of relativity that Einstein yet sought, and the foundational physical reality underlying and causing quantum nonlocality and entanglement, which Schrodinger labeled the “characteristic trait” of QM. Einstein’s Principle of Relativity, as well as his two postulates, derive from MDT’s simple physical model (Fig. 1) and single postulate which is more concise and has the added benefits of providing for free will, liberating us from the block universe, weaving change into the fundamental fabric of space-time for the first time in the history of relativity, and providing an elementary, foundational physical model for time and all its arrows and asymmetries, entropy, and QM’s nonlocality and entanglement, as well as reality’s probabilistic nature. The fourth dimension is inherently nonlocal via its invariant expansion, which is the source of nonlocality as well as relativity. All of this is more fully developed in Dr. E’s 2008 paper on MDT which examines Einstein’s 1912 Manuscript on Relativity18 and derives relativity from MDT’s dx4/dt=ic: Time as an Emergent Phenomenom: fqxi.org/community/forum/topic/238.
Simple, logical proofs of MDT:
MDT PROOF#1: Relativity tells us that a timeless, ageless photon remains in one place in the fourth dimension. Quantum mechanics tells us that a photon propagates as a spherically-symmetric expanding wavefront at the velocity of c. Ergo, the fourth dimension must be expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, in a spherically-symmetric manner. The expansion of the fourth dimension is the source of nonlocality, entanglement, time and all its arrows and asymmetries, c, relativity, entropy, free will, and all motion, change, and measurement, for no measurement can be made without change. For the first time in the history of relativity, change has been wedded to the fundamental fabric of spacetime in MDT.
MDT PROOF#2: Einstein (1912 Man. on Rel.) and Minkowski wrote x4=ict. Ergo dx4/dt=ic.
MDT PROOF#3: The only way to stay stationary in the three spatial dimensions is to move at c through the fourth dimension. The only way to stay stationary in the fourth dimension is to move at c through the three spatial dimensions. Ergo the fourth dimension is moving at c relative to the three spatial dimensions.
MDT twitter proof (limited to 140 characters): SR: photon is stationary in 4th dimension.
QM: photon is probability wave expanding @ c. Ergo: 4th dimension expands @ c & MDT: dx4/dt=ic –from http://twitter.com/45surf

When the Great Wheeler sadly passed away a few years ago, Colby Cosh saluted him in the National Post with, “At 96, he had been the last notable figure from the heroic age of physics lingering among us. . . the student of Bohr, teacher of Feynman, and close colleague of Einstein. . . Wheeler was as much philosopher-poet as scientist, seizing on Einsteinian relativity early . . . He was ready to believe in the new world before most physicists. . .” J.A. Wheeler, Princeton’s Joseph Henry Professor of Physics, wrote these kind words which I shall be forever thankful for, and which, as a recommendation for grad school, lead to my artificial retina Ph.D. dissertation project, which is now helping the blind see:

“More intellectual curiosity, versatility and yen for physics than Elliot McGucken’s I have never seen in any senior or graduate student. . . Originality, powerful motivation, and a can-do spirit make me think that McGucken is a top bet for graduate school in physics. . . I say this on the basis of close contacts with him over the past year and a half. . . I gave him as an independent task to figure out the time factor in the standard Schwarzchild expression around a spherically-symmetric center of attraction. I gave him the proofs of my new general-audience, calculus-free book on general relativity, A Journey Into Gravity and Space Time. There the space part of the Schwarzchild geometric is worked out by purely geometric methods. “Can you, by poor-man’s reasoning, derive what I never have, the time part?” He could and did, and wrote it all up in a beautifully clear account. . . .his second junior paper . . . entitled Within a Context, was done with another advisor, and dealt with an entirely different part of physics, the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky experiment and delayed choice experiments in general. . . this paper was so outstanding. . . I am absolutely delighted that this semester McGucken is doing a project with the cyclotron group on time reversal asymmetry. Electronics, machine-shop work and making equipment function are things in which he now revels. But he revels in Shakespeare, too. Acting the part of Prospero in The Tempest. . .”

The Wall Street Journal reported: “After winning (the Merrill Lynch Innovations Grant Contest for his physics Ph.D.), he got to tour The New York Stock Exchange. Dr. McGucken caught the entrepreneurial bug. Eventually, he launched an internet company devoted to his longtime passions: writing and classical literature. . .The Web site is filled with Dr. McGucken’s poetry and commentary and discussion groups on classic literature. “It’s all written in a classical context with a Generation X attitude,” he says. He sells ads to online vendors in fields ranging from life insurance to pantyhose and has a deal with Amazon.com that gives him a cut of sales generated by his site. . . HE HAS RESISTED the siren call of big business, although he has talked to venture capitalists and he almost sold out to a larger company before that company was taken over. Dr. McGucken wouldn’t mind being part of a larger site, but he doesn’t want to be a larger company. “If I was to try to squeeze huge profits out of it to please venture capitalists, it would ruin the spirit of it,” he says. . . ” —The Wall Street Journal The NCSU Engineering department reported, “NC State University and Dr. Elliot McGucken, assistant professor of physics at Elon College and post-doctoral research assistant in the College of Engineering at NC State, have received grants as part of the Merrill Lynch Forum¤s Innovation Grants Competition. Open to doctoral degree recipients, the international awards recognize innovative research that has commercial applications. McGucken, who entered his dissertation on developing an artificial retina system that combines microchips, miniature cameras and tiny electrodes, was selected as one of two second place winners from the competition field of 213 entries from 16 countries. The second place entries receive a $20,000 grant, and the university affiliated with the research receives a $5,000 incentive grant from Merrill Lynch. McGucken’s research, conducted with Dr. Wentai Liu, professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State University, involves the development of a microchip that can be implanted into the eye to restore limited visibility to patients with retinal degeneration. Estimations are that, once the device is tested and made available to the public, it could restore limited sight to more than 10,000,000 people. McGucken received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“. . they all fall off, one by one, until we are left with Virgil and Homer, and perhaps Homer alone.” -Thomas Jefferson

“The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.” –Helen Keller (And so often it is that those tiny pushes become the heroic act, as Neo, the honest cubicle worker, rises to take on The Matrix.)

“If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

“Virtue foes not come from money, but money and every lasting good of man derives from virtue.” –Socrates.

“I would trade all my technology to spend an afternoon with Socrates.” –Steve Jobs

“Fair dealing leads to greater profit in the end.” –Homer

“The greatest scientists are artists as well.” –Albert Einstein

“Science arose from poetry.” –Goethe

dx4/dt=ic — Dr. E

“Many thanks for the impressive work that you are doing. I look forward to keeping in touch and commend you on the innovative teaching you do.” -William Ferriss, former Chair of the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA)

The greater artists are entrepreneurs, and all greater entrepreneurs are artists. Tragically though, the world does not always realize the vast wealth created by poets, prophets, and heroes such as Melville, Boltzman, and van Gogh, until after they have departed. –Dr. E

Dr. Elliot McGucken

Don’t Count on It! Reflections on Investment Illusions, Capitalism, “Mutual” Funds, Indexing, Entrepreneurship, Idealism, and Heroes : “Vanguard: Saga of Heroes (Chapter 23) presents a very different interpretation than you might expect from its title. This chapter is based on a lecture I presented to Pepperdine University (CA) students, at the request of Professor Elliot McGucken, as part of his course The Hero’s Odyssey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology 101. “Dr. E” relies heavily upon such classics as Homer’s Odyssey and Dante’s Inferno, and honors me by including with these classics my own The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism. This essay focuses on Vanguard’s odyssey, a voyage punctuated with challenges, narrow escapes, and ultimate fulfillment. I conlude by urging introspection upon our financial leaders, an idea that failed to get much traction back in 2007 when it might have helped. But these leaders were simply making too much money, taking too much risk, and showing too little concern about the crises then building. . . -p. 436: “It’s no mean task to measure up to the high appraisal of my career that has been so generously expressed by Dr. Elliot McGucken. That he has, remarkably, placed my 2005 book, The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism, on the same reading list as The Odyssey–let alone the same planet!–adds even more to my burden in meeting the expectations of those who are aware of this background. . .” —Vanguard, Saga of Heroes, p. 469, Don’t Count on It published 2010 by John Wiley & Sons

JOHN BOGLE: Banks, money managers, insurance companies, certainly annuity providers. They’re all subtracting value from the economy. They have to subtract. To be clear on this now — I don’t want to overstate it. To be clear on this, they have to subtract some value. But, the question is —

BILL MOYERS: What do you mean they subtract some value?

JOHN BOGLE: In other words, — you’ve go to pay somebody something to provide a service. It’s just gotten totally out of hand. My estimate is that the financial sector takes $560 billion a year out of society. Five hundred and sixty billion.

Few, if any, give more than those who give freely along humble odysseys in pursuit of truth, beauty, and honor. The very quantum mechanics powering all our marvelous computing and communications technologies can be traced on back to the heroic Homeric Spirit–through Bohr and Einstein, to Newton, to Galileo, to Copernicus, to Aristotle, to the great Socrates who cited the courage of Achilles in refusing to rescind his teaching that “Virtue does not come from money, but money, and every lasting good of man, derives from virtue.” Yes, Socrates would choose death over dishonor while Fathering Western Philosophy as a battle for the truth of the soul. This would inspire Aristotle’s Natural Philosophy and ultimately all our science and technology which has ever advanced via the free spirit “questioning the experts” and “Speaking Truth to Power,” as Socrates did at his trial and as Achilles did in the opening of the Iliad. Steve Jobs (founder of Apple & Pixar) stated he would trade all his technology to spend an afternoon with Socrates, and so it is, that all our miraculous technological wealth can be traced on back to Homer–right on back to the very first word of that very first book–The Iliad, which begins with “RAGE, Sing O Goddess the RAGE of Achilles,” the godlike RAGE of Achilles, which was nothing more than the manifestation of his integral sense of honor. The RAGE ignited when Achilles’ commander seized Achilles’ rightful prize, it propelled him quit the Greek army and then to turn down the lavish prizes, rewards, and medals offered him to return to battle, and the RAGE ultimately drove him back into battle so as to avenge the death of his good friend, knowing full-well he would die. Like Socrates and all the countless poets, prophets, artists, scientists, and philosophers to come, Achilles was a man who, simply put, lived, and died, for honor–for excellence–for the pursuit of virtue via virtuous thought and action. And too, if one considers freedom the foundation of the “Wealth of Nations,” as one must, one need only ask freedom’s prime poet–Thomas Jefferson–who mentored him in penning The Declaration of Independence. And Jefferson would say as he said long ago, “. . . as we advance in life. . .they all fall off, one by one, until we are left with Virgil and Homer, and perhaps Homer alone.” Nor did Homer’s epic influence stop there. The great Italian director Sergio Leone, who chiseled the young Clint Eastwood into an international star in A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly stated, “The greatest scriptwriter of Westerns was Homer. The Archetypes of yesterday’s cowboys were Achilles, Ajax, Agamemnon, and Hector.” And so it is that my class, books, speeches, and festivals would all begin by quoting Homer. –Dr. E

Jack Bogle writes, “I want to thank . . . Elliot McGucken, Ph.D. . . whose course The Hero’s Odyssey in Artistic Entrepreneurship and Technology is an inspiring tribute to the relevance of classical ideals in our modern lives.” —Jack Bogle, founder and former CEO of Wall Street’s Vanguard Group in his book, Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life, Wiley, 2008 While proofing the book circa 2007/2008. Dr. E suggested some wisdom which Bogle included, including Socrates’, “Virtue does not come from money, but money and every lasting good of man derives from virtue,” and Homer’s, “Fair dealing leads to greater profit in the end.”

William Ferriss, former Chair of the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA):Many thanks for the impressive work that you are doing. I look forward to keeping in touch and commend you on the innovative teaching you do.

I received my first telescope when I was eight years old, alongside a subscription to Astronomy Magazine, and I set out to become astronomer. Way lead onto way, and after receiving the Judith Resnik scholarship which was created in honor of the brave astronaut who perished tragically in the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster, I attended Princeton University and ended up studying with Professor John Archibald Wheeler who had helped Niels Bohr split the atom and had named the Black Hole.

When the Great Wheeler sadly passed away a few years ago, Colby Cosh saluted him in the National Post with, “At 96, he had been the last notable figure from the heroic age of physics lingering among us. . . the student of Bohr, teacher of Feynman, and close colleague of Einstein. . . Wheeler was as much philosopher-poet as scientist, seizing on Einsteinian relativity early . . . He was ready to believe in the new world before most physicists. . .”

I’ll never forget the fine autumn day I walked into Wheeler’s third-floor office in Jadwin Hall at Princeton University for our weekly meeting, and he slowly turned from the window overlooking the fiery fall colors, his fist lightly clenched, and stated, “Today’s physics lacks the Noble,” his blue eyes smiling at the edges, “and it’s your generation’s duty to bring it back.” Seeing no future in the dominant (and yet ignoble!) String Theory, which has indeed gone nowhere for decades, I left theoretical physics for experimental physics, which lead on to my NSF-and-Fight-for-Sight-funded, award-winning Ph.D. dissertation titled Multiple Unit Artificial Retina Chipset to Aid the Visually Impaired and Enhanced CMOS Phototransistors. The artificial retina project, which I gave freely when I received a Merrill Lynch Innovations Award atop the North Tower of the WTC, is now helping the blind see.

Dr. Elliot McGucken’s NSF-funded, award-winning physics Ph.D. dissertation titled: Multiple Unit Artificial Retina Chipset to Aid the Visually Impaired and Enhanced CMOS Phototransistors in Popular Science. The technology is now helping the blind see. The Wall Street Journal reported: “After winning (the Merrill Lynch Innovations Grant Contest for an artificial retina for the blind titled Multiple unit artificial retina chipset to aid the visually impaired and enhanced holed-emitter CMOS phototransistors), he got to tour the New York Stock Exchange. Dr. McGucken caught the entrepreneurial bug. Eventually, he launched an internet company devoted to his longtime passions: writing and classical literature. . .The Web site is filled with Dr. McGucken’s poetry and commentary and discussion groups on classic literature. “It’s all written in a classical context with a Generation X attitude,” he says. He sells ads to online vendors in fields ranging from life insurance to pantyhose and has a deal with Amazon.com that gives him a cut of sales generated by his site. . . HE HAS RESISTED the siren call of big business, although he has talked to venture capitalists and he almost sold out to a larger company before that company was taken over. Dr. McGucken wouldn’t mind being part of a larger site, but he doesn’t want to be a larger company. “If I was to try to squeeze huge profits out of it to please venture capitalists, it would ruin the spirit of it,” he says. . . ” —The Wall Street Journal

Offered an opportunity to continue working on the retinal prosthesis in industry, I again followed my own star, love of mythology, and my own theory—Moving Dimensions Theory—which appeared as an appendix in my dissertation and continues on to this day as “Hero’s Odyssey Physics“–as a tribute in part to the late J.A. Wheeler–“the last notable figure from the heroic age of physics.” All my photographic art is signed with MDT’s equation—dx4/dt=ic, which stipulates that the fourth dimension is expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions, carrying photons of light at the rate of c.

The simple equation provides a more concise way of expressing Einstein’s two postulates of relativity, while also weaving change into the foundational fabric of spacetime, providing a mechanism for time and all its arrows and asymmetries, and presenting a novel physical model for both quantum entanglement (Quantum mechanics’ characteristic trait according to Schrodenger) and relativity (which Einstein yet sought a physical foundation for).

In the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. –Galileo

Yes, MDT describes the “prime-mover” mechanism which has carried all those photons from the Milky Way and distant galaxies—some of which departed over 200,000 years ago—destined for my camera’s tiny sensor. And as tiny as it was, that 36mp sensor stood upon the shoulders of epic heroes, for it had been built upon the quantum mechanics heroically developed and given freely by Einstein et al., who had in turn stood upon the shoulders of giants including Newton, Galileo, and Copernicus; who had chosen Truth and Beauty over Authority in the tradition of Socrates, who cited none other than the Great Poet Homer in choosing death over dishonor:

Someone will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong – acting the part of a good man or of a bad. Whereas, according to your view, the heroes who fell at Troy were not good for much, and the son of Thetis above all, who altogether despised danger in comparison with disgrace; and when his goddess mother said to him, in his eagerness to slay Hector, that if he avenged his companion Patroclus, and slew Hector, he would die himself – “Fate,” as she said, “waits upon you next after Hector”; he, hearing this, utterly despised danger and death, and instead of fearing them, feared rather to live in dishonor, and not to avenge his friend. “Let me die next,” he replies, “and be avenged of my enemy, rather than abide here by the beaked ships, a scorn and a burden of the earth.” Had Achilles any thought of death and danger? For wherever a man’s place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything, but of disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying. –Socrates’ Apology

And so it is that Homer’s heroic spirit, and all the parallel hero’s odysseys of the prophets, scientists, and philosophers the Master Poet (according to Dante) helped inspire, were present in the silicon chip, born of Rage of Achilles who speaks Truth to Power in the opening lines of it all–in Homer’s Iliad. Goethe was right in stipulating that, “science arose from poetry,” and that “a change of times might beneficently reunite the two as friends, at a higher level and to mutual advantage.” Nor was the Heroic Spirit–rooted in simple, empirical honor–which exalted Copernicus and Galileo to serve Truth and Beauty over Authority missed by Einstein:

Once it was recognized that the earth was not the center of the world, but only one of the smaller planets, the illusion of the central significance of man himself became untenable. Hence, Nicolaus Copernicus, through his work and the greatness of his personality, taught man to be honest. –(Albert Einstein, Message on the 410th Anniversary of the Death of Copernicus, 1953)

But before mankind could be ripe for a science which takes in the whole of reality, a second fundamental truth was needed, which only became common property among philosophers with the advent of Kepler and Galileo. Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts form experience and ends in it. Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty as regards reality. Because Galileo saw this, and particularly because he drummed it into the scientific world, he is the father of modern physics — indeed, of modern science altogether. (Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions)

Einstein was the first to note the profound, foundational connection between time and light, writing, “My solution was really for the very concept of time, that is, that time is not absolutely defined but there is an inseparable connection between time and the signal [light] velocity.” dx4/dt=ic provides the physical mechanism for this inherent, tautological connection, while the art of photography also celebrates the foundational connection between time and light, allowing us to trap light for all time. The Art of Photography captures light (and thus time), in a silicon chip, transfers the information to a Fuji-Chrsytal Archival print, and liberates the light in a gallery, setting it free for others to see for all eternity. Light follows the Joycean Monomyth–the epic hero’s odyssey–in photography, departing from the distant stars after crossing the atom’s threshold, odysseying hundreds of thousands of years along the road of trials through the cosmic dust that threatens to trap or deflect it every step of the way, getting captured in the belly of the camera where the photon meets its death even as it gains its final form and apotheosis, before it is resurrected in the form of a well-lit metallic print to deliver beauty’s ultimate boon to all those who see it hanging on the gallery wall.

J.A. Wheeler, Princeton’s Joseph Henry Professor of Physics, wrote these kind words which I shall be forever thankful for, and which, as a recommendation for grad school, lead to my artificial retina Ph.D. dissertation project, which is now helping the blind see:

“More intellectual curiosity, versatility and yen for physics than Elliot McGucken’s I have never seen in any senior or graduate student. . . Originality, powerful motivation, and a can-do spirit make me think that McGucken is a top bet for graduate school in physics. . . I say this on the basis of close contacts with him over the past year and a half. . . I gave him as an independent task to figure out the time factor in the standard Schwarzchild expression around a spherically-symmetric center of attraction. I gave him the proofs of my new general-audience, calculus-free book on general relativity, A Journey Into Gravity and Space Time. There the space part of the Schwarzchild geometric is worked out by purely geometric methods. “Can you, by poor-man’s reasoning, derive what I never have, the time part?” He could and did, and wrote it all up in a beautifully clear account. . . .his second junior paper . . . entitled Within a Context, was done with another advisor, and dealt with an entirely different part of physics, the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky experiment and delayed choice experiments in general. . . this paper was so outstanding. . . I am absolutely delighted that this semester McGucken is doing a project with the cyclotron group on time reversal asymmetry. Electronics, machine-shop work and making equipment function are things in which he now revels. But he revels in Shakespeare, too. Acting the part of Prospero in The Tempest. . .”

In the above “Follow your own star–Dante” photograph one can’t but help notice the curious dots of light on the side of El Capitan. Those are the lights of climbers who will be camping on the sheer granite face overnight, slumbering in hammocks suspended thousands of feet in the air. So tiny we all are, how small and fleeting are our own dreams and destinies when compared to the Cosmos, and yet, the photograph proves that even the lone individual, bold or crazy enough to scale their dreams above and beyond, shall burn as bright as the very stars themselves, while lasting longer than the shooting stars above.

Jack Bogle writes, “I want to thank . . . Elliot McGucken, Ph.D. . . whose course The Hero’s Odyssey in Artistic Entrepreneurship and Technology is an inspiring tribute to the relevance of classical ideals in our modern lives.” —Jack Bogle, founder and former CEO of Wall Street’s Vanguard Group in his book, Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life, Wiley, 2008 While proofing the book circa 2007/2008. Dr. E suggested some wisdom which Bogle included, including Socrates’, “Virtue does not come from money, but money and every lasting good of man derives from virtue,” and Homer’s, “Fair dealing leads to greater profit in the end.”

“. . . they all fall off, one by one, until we are left with Virgil and Homer, and perhaps Homer alone.” –Thomas Jefferson

“The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.” –Helen Keller (And so often it is that those tiny pushes become the heroic act, as Neo, the honest cubicle worker, rises to take on The Matrix.)

“If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.” –Martin Luther King Jr.

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story
of that man skilled in all ways of contending,
the wanderer, harried for years on end, . . . .
He saw the townlands
and learned the minds of many distant men,
and weathered many bitter nights and days
in his deep heart at sea, while he fought only
to save his life, to bring his shipmates home.–opening lines of Homer’s Odyssey describing the “hero’s odyssey” of the arts entrepreneur, as translated by Robert Fitzgerald (1961). The Odyssey (read alongside Jack Bogle’s Battle for the Soul of Capitalism) provides an excellent first book for The Hero’s Odyssey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology class.

Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. But the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. –Steve Jobs’ “Think Different” for Apple joins the opening of every “Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship” class and festival, as the life of Steve Jobs and story of Apple are examined in the context of Homer’s Odyssey and the Joycean Monomyth.

“And then and too the trivials! And their bivouac ! And his monomyth! Ah ho! Say no more about it! I’m sorry! I saw. I’m sorry! I’m sorry to say I saw!” –James Joyce in Finnegan’s Wake

Business Week 2006: From Beethoven to Bob Dylan: “Every artist is an entrepreneur.” So argues Dr. Elliot McGucken, a visiting professor at Pepperdine University, in an online video introduction to his course, Art Entrepreneurship & Technology 101, which has the professor lecturing from the shore of a small lake. Among his suggestions for artists who want to be more entrepreneurial: launch a blog.” –Business Week 2006

ARTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP: HOW TO BE A HERO by Mike Vargo From The Kauffman Foundation’s 2007 Thoughtbook (Interview conducted summer 2006): Elliot McGucken has an artful way of teaching entrepreneurship to artists. He explains the entrepreneurial process, for instance, by comparing it to the classic “hero’s odyssey” in myths and epics. Typically, in the first stage of the story, the hero embarks on a quest that requires “separation” or “departure” from the familiar world (here McGucken finds strong parallels to the decision to start a company) — and after many twists, the odyssey ends with the hero’s “return” (exit strategy). “Every aspect of classical story, including antagonists, mentors, reversals of fortune, and the seizing of the sword from the stone, may be found in the realm of entrepreneurship,” McGucken claims.

BusinessWeek Reports: Where Entrepreneurship Connects to the Classics: “Elliot McGucken, a professor of entrepreneurship at Pepperdine University, bemoans that “a lot of schools have dismissed the idea of teaching the great books.” In a recent lecture at Pepperdine, McGucken points out that that one lesson of the classics is, “Chance favors the prepared mind. Instead of viewing risk as a bad thing, we can also view it as a good thing.” The classics inspired America’s Declaration of Independence, which McGucken sees as an entrepreneurial document. Life has a way of “calling us to adventure,” he concludes.” —BusinessWeek

Dr. E was a “featured educator” at the Arts Entrepreneur Educator’s Network: Elliot McGucken’s efforts at UNC Chapel-Hill have received national attention. What is seldom noted, however, is the overwhelming student interest in class. In the spring of 2006, his class, “Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101” was open to 45 students – over 120 applied. For this fall, 215 expressed interest. By any measure, these are enviable numbers. Dr. B: Your class was virtually overrun with student interest. What contributed to the success of your effort? Dr. E: Students naturally love two things–the classics and the cutting edge. And that’s what AE&T is–an intersection of the two. With 10 students from music and art, and others from computer science, communications, business and law, it’s an idea whose time has come. Every student dreams of making their passion their profession, and the great thing about this country is that with some talent, luck, and a lot of hard work, this is possible. They read about the disappearing pensions and corporate scandals, and they think, “perhaps the best investment I can make is in my dreams.”

William Ferriss, former Chair of the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA): Many thanks for the impressive work that you are doing. I look forward to keeping in touch and commend you on the innovative teaching you do.

Jack Bogle: Your message to our nation’s young students–a message of idealism and enlightenment–is a breath of fresh air that must–and will–find its way into the musty corridors of our colleges and business schools. Perhaps your happy acronym–CREATE (Center for Renaissance Entrepreneurship, Art, Technology, and Economics).will help. Keep up the good work! –John C. Bogle, Founder & Former CEO of the Vanguard Group

Bill Fay: It was my pleasure to join you and keynote the Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship Festival. The enthusiasm of the students was great to see. –William Fay, Founder/President of Production at Legendary Pictures (Batman,Superman, Inception, The Hangover, 300, The Patriot)

Teresea Ciulla of Entrepreneur Magazine blogs, “Can you actually make your passion your profession? According to Dr. Elliot McGucken, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (and now Pepperdine University), who’s teaching the university’s first “Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101” class, the answer just may be yes. McGucken’s class, which is comprised of a group of 45 students majoring in law, business, art, computer science, journalism and music, focuses on teaching students about creating value over just making money, about letting their higher ideals guide the bottom line. After all, as McGucken says, “Successful companies aren’t successful because they make money–they’re successful because they create value.” Class projects range from a classical music video to a hip hop curriculum and textbook to an online art gallery to a freshman’s record label that’s signed more than ten bands to a social network being programmed by three computer science majors. Students are seeing that to the degree they succeed in creating useful art and ventures, they’ll be able to support their passions with a profitable business. And isn’t that what we’re all really striving for? To find an excitement in our work in order to beat back the dullness of the typical 9-to-5 routine? Looks like McGucken’s found a way to inspire a new generation of artistically minded entrepreneurs to follow their passions–and make a living.”

The New York Times reports:Literary Criticism Pulled Down From Ivory Towers: . . . And whether the academics accept it or not doesn’t matter; because the dialogue that’s developed online on the subject of Joyce and the likes of Melville, Fitzgerald, Camus, Shakespeare, and Hemingway adds instantly to the understanding of literature simply because of the depth of the online debate. It is simply unprecedented. “While it has often been tough to find good conversation in the bars and cafes around Chapel Hill, it has never been so on our Web sites,” says Elliot McGucken, president of the North Carolina-based Kill Devil Hill site, named for a hill on Cape Hatteras and billing itself as “The World’s Largest Literary Cafe.” “We are now serving over 1,000,000 page views a month, and the day has long ago passed when we were able to keep up with all the interesting posts and cool conversations.” That’s certainly an understatement. KillDevilHill.Com and two related sites — Western Canon University and The Jolly Roger, two avowed pro-Western canon communities that make little room for modern literature — teem with discussion, the kind that goes well beyond freshman lit 101. On the Mark Twain discussion board, a visitor wonders aloud about the “aspects of nature” in the Royal Nonesuch performance in Huckleberry Finn. There are arguments over William Shakespeare’s childhood in the Shakespearean section. Over on the Herman Melville board, posters discuss Ahab’s use of the sea chart as a controlling mechanism and Ishmael’s artistic nature. . . The sites pointedly concentrate on what he calls the permanence of the Great Books over the transience of pop culture. . . It’s an informal education to be sure, the kind McGucken likens to Thomas Jefferson’s original plan for the University of Virginia, as an “institution where attendance would not be taken, where there would be no formal classes, and where scholars and students would be free to come and go during a perpetual conversation centered about the Greats.” But McGucken believes that the person who comes to discuss Fitzgerald will come back for Aristophanes, Melville or Twain. —The New York Times

Dr. E’s Hero’s Odyssey Mythology Photography Collection receives over 1,000,000 views/day. Pieces hanging in the Los Angeles gallery above include Ulysses’ Sunset, The Rage of Achilles over River Styx, Calypso’s Cave, Thor’s Hammer, and Dante: Follow your own star. The ten-foot triptych of Monument Valley on the upper left is titled The Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid. Enjoy some of Dr. E’s fine art set to Beethoven’s Third Symphony Eroica–the Heroic Symphony:

2005 The Triangle Business Journal reports: What do you get when you combine an interest in the arts with an interest in entrepreneurial ventures and an interest in cutting-edge technology? Dr. Elliot McGucken at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill says the result is someone he calls an artistic entrepreneur. Thus, he’s received a grant from the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative to launch a class called Artistic Entrepreneurship. Known as “Dr. E” to his students, McGucken teaches physics and programming and has published a poetry book, a novel, a collection of essays, several scientific articles and – huh? – poetry in The Wall Street Journal. —The Triangle Business Journal, 2005

Dr. E keynoting the 2009 Syracuse University Entrepreneurship Classroom which hosts teachers, professors, and academics interested in entrepreneurship and innovation in education: Note that most everyone is still awake during Dr. E’s classic Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship Lecture!

Dr. E was a mentor at hiphop entrepreneur Russell Simmons’ The Race to Be/BE THE STORY: “Mentor Elliot McGucken references that young entrepreneurs have just the same problems as the big studios re: piracy.” Dr. E’s patent applications on Rights Management for indie artists have been referenced by the likes of Google, Sony, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, and Ebay.

Dr. E—your lecture really stayed with me, and I’ve thought about it long after class. I am a recording artist so it resonated with me–that the entrepreneur’s odyssey is similar to that of the mythic hero — I’ve had a Billboard charting single and music placements on TLC and VH1 but I’d been reluctant to really put myself completely into it because of the uncertainty involved–the refusal of the call.. . . Now I see it as a natural process–as going into my own “departure” into the woods. Your lecture renewed my focus and energy. . . as it associated structure with what often feels like a chaotic odyssey. Sometimes failure, enemies, and refusal are part of the odyssey when one sets off to live by ideals and art–they don’t teach this in other classes, where failure to fit in to the corporate structure, which itself is so often corrupt, is failure. The way you apply mythology to entrepreneurship is innovative, inspiring, energizing and enlightening. There should be more classes like this in every MBA program, as it appealed to me as an artist and as an MBA. The mythological blueprint brings new meaning to the entrepreneurial/MBA experience, as one feels like a mythic hero on their own professional odyssey, where it’s OK to be fired as long as one has the truth on their side; as long as one never fires their own idealism. This stayed with me long after the class, as I started to see my life and professional progress as a great odyssey. I was energized with excitement for every part of the process.for like you said, although the The Lord of The Rings was about getting the ring to Mordor, what would have the nine-hour odyssey been without the “tests, allies, and enemies;” without friends and epic battles? Would love a copy of The Gold 45 Revolver: The Hero’s Odyssey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology when it comes out. I feel like sharing some music with you.

“I feel like sharing some music with you”—the sublime sense of being inspired to share something with the world—is how it all began, with Homer singing of the classic entrepreneur—the one skilled in all ways of contending, seeking to serve:

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the storyof that man skilled in all ways of contending…He saw the townlands,and learned the minds of many distant men…and weathered many bitter nights and daysin his deep heart at sea . . .Striving only to bring his men home. –Homer’s Odyssey

And the goal of “Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship” has ever been to serve the student, artist, and entrepreneur, alongside Truth and Beauty, as Dr. E penned circa 2006/2007:

The same classical values guiding the rising artistic renaissance will protect the artists’ intellectual property. The immortal ideals which guide the story of blockbuster books and movies such asThe Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Braveheart,The Chronicles of Narnia, and Star Wars, are the very same ideals underlying the United States Constitution. These classic ideals–which pervade Homer, Plato, Shakespeare, and the Bible–are the source of both epic story and property rights, of law and business, of academia and civilization.

It is great to witness classical ideals performed in Middle Earth, upon the Scottish Highlands, long ago, in a galaxy far, far, away, and in Narnia, but too, such ideals must be perpetually performed in the contemporary context and living language.

The Hero’s Odyssey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology seeks to give students, artists, and entrepreneurs the tools to make their passions their professions–to protect and profit from their ideas–to take ownership in their careers and creations. For Adam Smith’s invisible hand enriches all when happiness is pursued by artists and innovators–society’s natural founts of wealth. Thomas Jefferson eloquently expressed the entrepreneurial premise:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. –The Declaration of Independence

The only clause in the main body of the United States Constitution that mentions “Rights” states the following:

The Congress shall have power to . . . promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; –The United States Constitution

Couple these two passages together, and one has the moral premise of Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology. Every student ought be given the tools to create new ventures–to protect their intellectual property, and to pursue and profit from their dreams on their “Hero’s Odyssey” into entrepreneurship. For it is along that odyssey that the long-term “wealth of nations” is generated.

Please enjoy this compilation of some early Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship & “The Hero’s Odyssey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology” Lectures, Articles, Blogs, Interviews, Science, Art, Entrepreneurship, & Reflections by Dr. E et al. Begin by listening to award-winning-physicist/engineer/screenwriter Dr. E’s 2007 ITConversations “Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship” Podcast which he was invited to do after delivering his “Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship” lecture to a packed room at Austin’s 2007 SXSW. The lecture was based on Christopher Vogler’s treatment of the Joycean monomyth in his book The Writer’s Journey and Joseph Campbell’s treatment in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, as well classics including the Iliad, Odyssey, and Exodus. Epic Mythology and “The Great Books” of yore inspired Dr. E’s innovative Hero’s Odyssey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology class and Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship Festival, which was funded by the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative, Kenan Institute, and Kauffman Foundation at UNC Chapel Hill in 2005-2006 and Pepperdine University in Malibu in 2006-2009. The spirit of the class continues on in Dr. E’s Hero’s Odyssey Mythology fine art photography collection and gallery shows, 45SURF Hero’s Odyssey Mythology surfline, technologies to empower artists with digital rights management, novel videogames, award-winning screenplays, novels, and a graphic novel slated to appear at this year’s San Diego’s Comic Con International. And most importantly, the spirit of the class continues on in several soon-to-be-published manuscripts devoted to Hero’s Odyssey Mythology and Entrepreneurship, so that the most-popular, highly-rated Hero’s Odyssey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology class may continue serving many more students. And just as every artist is an entrepreneur, and all entrepreneurs artists, so too is is that every artist and entrepreneur is first and foremost a perpetual, lifelong student. In every class I teach, I am part of the Fellowship. Enjoy some early thoughts and musings on Hero’s Odyssey Mythology & Entrepreneurship!

The festival will include several professionals in the arts and humanities field including Flint Dille and John Zuur of the award winning “Chronicles of Riddick” and David Whatley, the CEO of Simutronics. The festival will also include a keynote speech by William Fay, who is the executive producer of films such as “The Patriot,” “Superman Returns” and the current blockbuster movie “300.”

“The Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship Festival seeks to give students, artists and entrepreneurs the tools to make their passions their professions,” said Dr. Elliot McGucken, visiting professor of business. “The rising generation is longing for epic story across all mediums.”

McGucken’s growing popularity is clearly visible not only in his students, but also fellow members of the Pepperdine staff and faculty. Vice Chancellor Michael Warder, for example, said the concept of spreading entrepreneurship and business to artists of all types is part of McGucken’s genius.

“I think he speaks to creative students who are steeped in the digital revolution in a very powerful and responsible way,” Warder said.

McGucken said he originally had the idea for the festival in the fall. McGucken’s work is supported by a $125,000 grant that Pepperdine received from the prestigious Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation (2006) to further curriculum development for Artistic Entrepreneurship and Technology; a curriculum that has many students eager to participate.

Pepperdine student Dylan Vandam was asked to be a volunteer for the festival and said he immediately wanted to get involved.

“I want to network with other students, faculty and professionals to pursue and to incorporate the knowledge imparted from the leaders at the festival into my everyday life,” Vandam said.

As a student volunteer, Vandam has contributed to the festival by designing the t-shirts that will be worn and given away March 31. Vandam hopes to use his education in pursuing a life based on strong values, which he says he has learned as a Pepperdine student.

Junior Michelle Petty is also a participant and student volunteer for the festival. Petty is a creative writing major and said she was excited when she first heard about the event through Facebook.

Petty says she will have a multi-faceted role in the festival as an usher, liaison, and clean-up crew member.

Dr. E received a Merrill Lynch Innovations Award for his Fight for Sight & NSF-funded physics Ph.D. dissertation on an artificial retina for the blind titled Multiple Unit Artificial Retina Chipset to Aid the Visually Impaired and Enhanced CMOS Phototransistors, which is now helping the blind see. While receiving the award atop the World Trade Center for the research which appeared in Popular Science, NSF’s Frontiers, and numerous academic/IEEE journals, Dr. E thanked the fellowship of doctors, scientists, and engineers who had made the humble hero’s odyssey possible, and gave the technology away freely. The Wall Street Journal reported, “After winning (the Merrill Lynch Innovations Grant Contest for an artificial retina for the blind), he got to tour the New York Stock Exchange. Dr. McGucken caught the entrepreneurial bug. Eventually, he launched an internet company devoted to his longtime passions: writing and classical literature. . .The Web site is filled with Dr. McGucken’s poetry and commentary and discussion groups on classic literature. “It’s all written in a classical context with a Generation X attitude,” he says. He sells ads to online vendors in fields ranging from life insurance to pantyhose and has a deal with Amazon.com that gives him a cut of sales generated by his site. . . HE HAS RESISTED the siren call of big business, although he has talked to venture capitalists and he almost sold out to a larger company before that company was taken over. Dr. McGucken wouldn’t mind being part of a larger site, but he doesn’t want to be a larger company. “If I was to try to squeeze huge profits out of it to please venture capitalists, it would ruin the spirit of it,” he says. . .” —The Wall Street Journal

The top ten-foot-wide tryptic Hero’s Odyssey Mythology artwork of Monument Valley is titled THE ILIAD, ODYSSEY, & AENEID. (from Dr. E’s fine art Hero’s Odyssey Mythology Photography collection.) Dr. E is donating some of his fine art to area hospitals, with the hopes that someday someone empowered with the artificial retina chipset may also find a bit of inspiration in a larger rendering of Monument Valley. All the epic precepts from the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid resound throughout Jack Bogle’s epic speech” VANGUARD:SAGA OF HERO’S” delivered at the 2007 Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship Festival:

And finally, the vastly accomplished William Fay (President of Production at Legendary Pictures) delivered an epic speech on the epic Movie 300 based on Frank Miller’s graphic novel, whence 300 Spartans defeated far-larger forces via classical honor and courage, paralleling the manner in which the film 300, produced on “Spartan” budget that was half of typical epics, became a blockbuster which went on to break boxoffice records:

Dr. E interviewing renaissance men/videogame designers Flint Dille and John Zuur Platten at the Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship Festival. Dillios–the storytelling Spartan in Frank Miller’s graphic novel and Zack Snyder’s film 300 was named after Flint Dille. Flint & John are pioneering videogame developers, writers, and producers, spearheading the transmedia renaissance. Check out their highly-rated book–a book for all writers–The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007 HERO’S ODYSSEY ENTREPRENEURSHIP FESTIVAL The first annual HERO’S ODYSSEY ENTREPRENEURSHIP FESTIVAL will be held on March 31 at Pepperdine University. It has been organized by Dr. Elliot McGucken. Here is a description of the day-long event:

“The Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship Festival seeks to give students, artists, and entrepreneurs the tools to make their passions their professions–to protect and profit from their ideas–to take ownership in their careers and creations. For Adam Smith’s invisible hand enriches all when happiness is pursued by artists and innovators–society’s natural founts of wealth.”

“Many thanks for the impressive work that you are doing. I look forward to keeping in touch and commend you on the innovative teaching you do.” –William Ferriss, former Chair of the National Endowment of the Arts

Recording artist Vaughn Penn performs at the Hero’s Odyssey Mythology Rocky Raccon’s music festival hosted by the students in Dr. E’s class. Proceeds from the show, wherein many of the students performed, were donated to Durham’s Music Maker Foundation: “Music Maker Relief Foundation, a 501c3 non-profit, preserves and promotes the musical traditions of the American South. Since 1994 we have partnered with traditional artists over 55 years old who survive on a yearly income of less than $18,000, sustaining their day-to-day needs while building their careers. Through Music Maker, our rich heritage of folk music will not be lost with the passing of time.”

“It was my pleasure to join you and keynote the Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship Festival. The enthusiasm was just great to see.” –William Fay, Founder/President of Production at Legendary Pictures (300, The Dark Knight, Batman Begins, The Clash of The Titans, The Hangover)

BusinessWeek Reports: Where Entrepreneurship Connects to the Classics: “Elliot McGucken, a professor of entrepreneurship at Pepperdine University, bemoans that “a lot of schools have dismissed the idea of teaching the great books.” In a recent lecture at Pepperdine, McGucken points out that that one lesson of the classics is, “Chance favors the prepared mind. Instead of viewing risk as a bad thing, we can also view it as a good thing.” The classics inspired America’s Declaration of Independence, which McGucken sees as an entrepreneurial document. Life has a way of “calling us to adventure,” he concludes.” —BusinessWeek

ARTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP: HOW TO BE A HERO by Mike Vargo From The Kauffman Foundation’s 2007 Thoughtbook (Interview conducted summer 2006) Elliot McGucken has an artful way of teaching entrepreneurship to artists. He explains the entrepreneurial process, for instance, by comparing it to the classic “hero’s odyssey” in myths and epics. Typically, in the first stage of the story, the hero embarks on a quest that requires “separation” or “departure” from the familiar world (here McGucken finds strong parallels to the decision to start a company) — and after many twists, the odyssey ends with the hero’s “return” (exit strategy). “Every aspect of classical story, including antagonists, mentors, reversals of fortune, and the seizing of the sword from the stone, may be found in the realm of entrepreneurship,” McGucken claims.

And there’s more. The college course he designed — open to students in any major, working in any of the visual, literary or performing arts — mixes classical concepts with cutting-edge practical advice, such as how to use open-source DRM (digital rights management) to keep the ogres from snatching your profits. The course is called Artistic Entrepreneurship and Technology 101.

First offered this past spring at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, with support from the Kauffman Campuses Initiative, it has drawn rave reviews from students. The core message of AE&T 101 is that “ideals are real,” and in fact are practical: that you don’t have to choose between being a starving artist or selling out. By starting a venture of your own that combines high artistic standards with sound business principles, you can “rock your dreams,” McGucken tells students; he says that in the arts as in business, pursuing “fundamental value” pays off. —Mike Vargo From The Kauffman Foundation’s 2007 Thoughtbook (Interview conducted summer 2006)

May 29th, 2006 Kenan Institute News: New Book by UNC’s Artistic Entrepreneurship Professor Highlights the Spirit of Entrepreneurs Chapel Hill, N.C. — Dr. Elliot McGucken, who developed and taught an artistic entrepreneurship course at UNC this spring, is the author of a new book that discusses the spirit of entrepreneurs in the context of epic storytelling and the hero’s odyssey. “Whether you’re an MBA, MFA, JD or DJ, the book is there to show you how the business of art and the art of business are united in the realm of higher ideals in epic storytelling,” said McGucken, five-time author and adjunct professor of Physics and Programming.

His new book is called The 45 Revolver — Epic Story & the Hero’s Odyssey in Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 10: Ideals Are Real. The book, to be released in July, was inspired by McGucken’s pilot course at UNC, Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101. It includes topics discussed in class, including McGucken’s experience running profitable Internet companies and his vision that an entrepreneur’s ideas found through technology, law, business or art can lead to their passion, profession or vocation. “The book, which unites art and entrepreneurship in a maverick way by treating entrepreneurs as hero storytellers, was shaped around Joseph Campbell’s book, Hero with a Thousand Faces,” said McGucken. “This classic 12-stage odyssey includes a mythological hero or heroine, the call to adventure (an entrepreneurial vision), and the return to home (the exit strategy).”

Campbell’s book influenced Hollywood films like Star Wars, Matrix and Lord of the Rings. McGucken hopes his new book can inspire blockbuster ventures. “Using the hero’s odyssey is a most efficient way to combine art, law, business, technology and entrepreneurship in the classroom,” McGucken said. “The book presents the odyssey of entrepreneurs in a classical context and their encounter with mentors, rescues, irony and survival in its epic form. The purpose is to inspire students to make the world a better place via artistic entrepreneurship.”

McGucken’s class at UNC attracts students who are interested in the arts, entrepreneurial ventures and cutting-edge technologies. “Everyone needs mentors to help guide you down whatever path you choose,” McGucken said. “For some people, a hero character from a book or movie can also be a mentor.”” –May 2006 Kenan Institute, UNCCH

I.D.E.A. to Exit: An Entrepreneurial Journey: Author and Professor Elliot McGucken, Ph.D. describes the entrepreneurial process to his arts students through an analogy to ancient literature. He describes the first stage of the entrepreneur and that of the classic “hero” story as an odyssey in which the hero, or entrepreneur, “embarks on a quest that requires separation and departure from the familiar world.. . . The entrepreneur moves into the unknown and the unproven. . .” Departure from the familiar is what keeps many from not exploring their entrepreneurial world at all. –Jeffrey Weber: I.D.E.A. to Exit: An Entrepreneurial Journey, p. 3, (Published 2010 by Mill City Press)

From the updated Kindle version of Jeffrey Weber’s book IDEA to Exit: “Entrepreneurship does involve a certain process, but it is one of infinite variety and forms. Author and professor Dr. Elliot McGucken describes the entrepreneurial process to his art students as similar to the classic “hero” story, in which the hero/ entrepreneur “embarks on a quest that requires separation or departure from the familiar world.” 1 McGucken hits it right on the head. The entrepreneur moves into the unknown and the unproven, the world that lies beyond the walls of risk. Fear of the unfamiliar stops many from following their ideas and exploring their world. The entrepreneur, however, moves on, passing through a gate represented by the first defining moment of the odyssey: the discovery of an idea that he or she feels driven to pursue. The road ahead might take all sorts of unexpected twists and threatening turns as it threads a series of additional gates or milestones that the entrepreneur must pass through in order to achieve success. Those gates are represented by the markers outlined in this book, such as scaling the business or idea, promoting ongoing innovation, building the bureaucracy, and executing a well-planned exit .” Weber, Jeffrey (2013-10-08). (Updated) From Idea to Exit: The Entrepreneurial Journey (Kindle Locations 327-336). Allworth Press. Kindle Edition.

“Your message to our nation’s young students—a message of idealism and enlightenment—is a breath of fresh air that must—and will—find its way into the musty corridors of our colleges and business schools. Perhaps your happy acronym—CREATE (Center for Renaissance Entrepreneurship, Art, Technology, and Economics)—will help. Keep up the good work!” –John C. Bogle, Founder & Former CEO of the Vanguard Group

Calypso’s Cave: Dr. Elliot McGucken Fine Art

UNC Class Combines Art With Business

Pilot course about ‘turning passion into profession’Chapel Hill Herald, May 2006: “UNC senior James Alsop … had a part on a Fox reality competition, “So You Think You Can Dance?” and landed an audition for Janet Jackson…….”That’s someone running with their idea,” said McGucken, who taught Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101 this spring, a pilot course funded by a grant from the Carolina Entrepreneurial Initiative Innovations Fund. Alsop was one of 40 students in the UNC class devoted to transforming artistic interests into feasible business and career ventures. …. “It’s [about] turning passion into profession,” McGucken explained. “So often we’re told that your dreams are one thing but that eventually you have to grow up and get a real job. Oftentimes, passion is the most important credential. You’ll figure everything else out.”…. Seemingly disparate subjects and majors combine … Students majoring in business, art, computer science, music and more collaborate with other students as they work on independent projects…..”A lot of it is encouraging you to continue doing what you’re doing,” said Bobby Sweatt, a junior and a student in A&ET 101. “By being in a group of artists that all have similar goals and ideas, you learn how to achieve your dreams.” Sweatt’s project is a Web site featuring his own photography, music and graphic art. The class is the first of its kind to incorporate art, technology and business. … The new curriculum would help artistically inclined students create sustainable social and commercial ventures, McGucken said…. McGucken envisions a program that focuses on the intersection between art and technology…. “More than anything [theclass is] a sign of the times,” he said. “The digital revolution has collapsed all the boundaries. Law,technology, art and business are intertwined. The second you create a photo it’s art, it’s digital and you can sell it. Things that used to take years, now take moments.” … Because of the digital revolution, McGucken explained, the costs of production and distribution are lowered. …. McGucken will release a textbook on the subject and hopes to continue the goals of this class as he goes on to teach the course in Los Angeles …. “The class,” he said, “was a chance to chance to keep the higher ideals above the bottom line.” –The Chapel Hill Herald, 2006

Hero’s Odyssey Mythology contains the source and soul of all the principles enshrined in law, enduring art, and wealth-generating entrepreneurship. And thus, if arts entrepreneurship can truly be taught, there is no better way to teach it than by presenting the poetry of those prophets who have endured for thousands of years while exalting the most epic brands–those original, and everlasting artistic entrepreneurs–creators of immeasurable wealth via the inspiration to endure along our own private odysseys while staying true to the epic ideals of our soul, as sure as Penelope stayed true to Odysseus and Dante stayed true to Beatrice, as Virgil penned, “Love conquers all, so let us too surrender to love.” Thomas Jefferson, who penned The Declaration of Independence which calls us all to adventure in the pursuit of “life, liberty, and happiness,” stated in his later years “They all fall off, one by one, until we are left with Virgil and Homer, and perhaps Homer alone.” And so it is that my class begins with Homer, calling upon the students to embark on a Hero’s Odyssey of their own making, owning the rewards of the risks of their own taking. In the epic classics and life stories of the likes of Steven Jobs, Socrates, Richard Branson, Beethoven, Aristotle, Galileo, and Jack Bogle, students will gain insight into the natural stages of the hero’s odyssey. And thus the “Belly of the Whale,” and temporal failure along the “Road of Trials,” will be seen not as the end-all, be-all, but a natural, (albeit most scary!) part of the Epic Hero’s Odyssey. Mythology’s greatest gift is thus faith, that if we too stick by our ideals like Odysseus and Aeneas, if we too speak Truth to Power like Achilles, Moses, Socrates, Copernicus, and Galileo, our brand will also live forever in story, alongside Achilles. Even though the “pius” Aeneas lost it all in the Fall of Troy, he escaped with his ideals intact and went on to found Rome, in the same way Steve Jobs went on to found Pixar after Apple was seized from him by the MBA John Sculley–the very same archetypal King Agamemnon who seized Achilles’ prize, causing Achilles to quit. And just as Apple began to fail without Achilles, the Greek army began to fail without Achilles. Yes, long before Atlas shrugged in Atlas Shrugs, Achilles quit the Greek Army. Yes, Homer’s genius captured it all, and as a salute to Homer, my latest ten-foot-wide tryptic artwork for my Hero’s Odyssey Mythology Photography collection is called THE ILIAD, THE ODYSSEY, AND AENEID: The gallery description reads:

John Ford. John Wayne. Stagecoach. The Searchers. Easy Rider and 2001 A Space Odyssey. All exalted, and were exalted by, the world’s most epic natural stage—Monument Valley. The great director Sergio Leone, who chiseled the young Clint Eastwood into an international star in A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly stated, “The greatest scriptwriter of Westerns was Homer. The Archetypes of yesterday’s cowboys were Achilles, Ajax, Agamemnon, and Hector.” The first half of Virgil’s Aeneid paralleled the Odyssey, while the second half followed the plot of the Iliad. Socrates would cite the honor of Achilles while choosing death over dishonor and birthing philosophy (and thus science and technology!), while Virgil would mentor Dante on down through hell in the Inferno, where Dante would also encounter Homer, calling him the premiere poet. In his later years the great poet who authored the Declaration of Independence—Thomas Jefferson—would write, “As we advance in life, they all fall off, one by one, until we are left with Virgil and Homer, and perhaps Homer alone.” And so it is that has the rains fall year after year, and the rivers run, the body of the land is etched away so as to reveal the immortal soul, and towering there we can see the unyielding poetry—the Iliad, Odyssey, and Aeneid.

“Go forth and make a name for yourself in story,” is how Athena–the goddess of wisdom–calls Telemachus to adventure in Homer’s Odyssey, as it is time for him to find news of his true father Odysseus, rid his home of the false suitors, and test his mettle–to build his brand in Epic Story. And so it is that Athena calls every student (and faculty member/business owner/entrepreneur!) to adventure, to voyage alongside Telemachus and Odysseus who, at the end of the Odyssey, imparts that most formidable, essential wisdom to every student seeking to enrich the world via entrepreneurship, “Fair dealing leads to greater profit in the end.” –Dr. E A compilation of some early Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship & “The Hero’s Odyssey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology” Lectures, Articles, Blogs, Interviews, & Reflections by Dr. E:

THE GRAPHIC reports (March 2007), “Festival to promote business creativity RICHARD NAVA Staff Writer The excitement of the epics of the past can be utilized to promote creativity and entrepreneurship, according to the organizers of the first Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship Festival, held Saturday. Seaver College will host the event at the Pepperdine School of Law. The festival will include several professionals in the arts and humanities field including Flint Dille and John Zuur of the award winning “Chronicles of Riddick” and David Whatley, the CEO of Simutronics. The festival will also include a keynote speech by William Fay, who is the executive producer of films such as “The Patriot,” “Superman Returns” and the current blockbuster movie “300.” “The Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship Festival seeks to give students, artists and entrepreneurs the tools to make their passions their professions,” said Dr. Elliot McGucken, visiting professor of business. “The rising generation is longing for epic story across all mediums.” McGucken’s growing popularity is clearly visible not only in his students, but also fellow members of the Pepperdine staff and faculty. Vice Chancellor Michael Warder, for example, said the concept of spreading entrepreneurship and business to artists of all types is part of McGucken’s genius. “I think he speaks to creative students who are steeped in the digital revolution in a very powerful and responsible way,” Warder said. McGucken said he originally had the idea for the festival in the fall. McGucken’s work is supported by a $125,000 grant that Pepperdine received from the prestigious Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation to further curriculum development for Artistic Entrepreneurship and Technology; a curriculum that has many students eager to participate.”–The Graphic, March 2007

“I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.” –Morpheus, The Matrix

Tired of being a starving artist? Dr. Elliot McGucken’s Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101 puts together a new approach to entrepreneurship and the arts through a fascinating application of the classic odyssey of mythological heroes. McGucken, a physicist, has taught the class at both UNC Chapel Hill and Pepperdine, and has expanded the concept through blogs, a festival, and an upcoming book. In this interview McGucken describes how the course applies the structure of the monomyth, the fundamental pattern of the great hero narratives throughout history, from Odysseus, Jesus, and Buddha to Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and The Matrix. Also called the Hero’s Odyssey, Joseph Campbell identified this pattern in his book The Hero With A Thousand Faces. McGucken even takes it a step beyond, using examples from modern real-life success stories like Richard Branson and Kid Rock. McGucken explains why the web’s democratization of both the means of production and distribution can be used by the big companies to continue to exploit artists, or instead used by indie artists themselves who preserve their own rights in their successful odyssey. It’s your choice, if you take it.

Elliot McGucken was born in Ohio, and grew up outdoors except for when he was sitting in front of a computer. He received a B.A. in physics from Princeton and a Ph.D. in physics from UNC Chapel Hill where his dissertation on an artifical retina for the blind received several NSF grants and a Merrill Lynch Innovations Award. The retina-chip research appeared in publications including Popular Science and Business Week, and the project continues to this day. In 1995 McGucken founded Classicals & jollyroger.com LLC as a technological tribute to the great books, and he has spoken at the Harvard Law School concerning his authena.org project for Open Source software for managing digital rights for artists. McGucken, known as “Dr. E” to his students, teaches physics and programming at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and has published a poetry book, a novel, a collection of essays, several scientific articles, and poetry in The Wall Street Journal. McGucken founded the Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship Festival in Malibu, CA. Keynote speakers have included John C. Bogle, the founder and former CEO of Vanguard, and William Fay, executive producer at Legendary Pictures. The festival pays homage to Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces and the Hero’s Odyssey in all walks of life. Resources:

You will find the standard “Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship” lecture outlined on Dr. E’s Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology site (artsentrepreneurship.com) and in his Hero’s Odyssey Matrix, as well as in podcasts of a speech he delivered to Bijoy’s Bootstrap Network, SXSW, and IT Converstations. Below is a brief outline, inspired by the works of Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces and Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey, that Dr. E presented at Autsin’s SXSW in 2007. Dr. E’s “Hero’s Odyssey Entreprenuership” speech has been delivered at institutions including UCLA, UNC, Duke, Wake Forest, IHS, and Chapman University, and it informed Dr. E’s 2009 opening keynote at Syracuse Univeristy’s Entrepreneurship Classroom.

Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101

Talking Portraits with Tom Parish

52 minutes, 23.9mb, recorded 2007-04-09 (archive favorite)

HERO’S ODYSSEY ENTREPRENEURSHIP OUTLINE

1. The Ordinary World: You awake each day to the routine, rise, and leave your dreams behind. The world exists without your ideals.

Blog your dream. Set it down in a notebook. Take ownership in your ideas @ blogger.com, wordpress.org/wordpress.com, and weebly.com, where you can set up websites in a few minutes. When you set down a thought in the morning, you plant a seed that grows throughout the day. Let it grow naturally and organically, catching that most valuable inspiration when it beckons. For if you ignore it, the seed will be lost, and thus any future forest. Come up with a domain name and register it!

A odyssey of a thousand li starts with a single step. –Tao

Resources: blogger.com, wordpress.org/wordpress.com, weebly.com

Inexpensive Domains: 1and1.com, godaddy.com

2. The Call to Adventure: A more vivid dream—a flash of inspiration. You can’t shake the feeling—the wave is real, though they can’t see it.

Register those copyrights. File that provisional patent. Register that trademark. Voyage on out to your bookstore and cruise the section on entrepreneurship. Check out uspto.gov, copyright.gov, and nolo.com. Read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—they were written for you; and they call you to adventure with your right to patent and protect your innovations as you pursue life, liberty, and happiness.

Arts Entrepreneurship seeks to give students, artists, and entrepreneurs the tools to make their passions their professions—to protect and profit from their ideas—to take ownership in their careers and creations. For Adam Smith’s invisible hand enriches all when happiness is pursued by artists and innovators—society’s natural founts of wealth. Thomas Jefferson eloquently expressed the entrepreneurial premise:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. —The Declaration of Independence

The only clause in the main body of the United States Constitution that mentions “Rights” states the following:

The Congress shall have power to . . . promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries; —The United States Constitution

Couple these two passages together, and one has the moral premise of Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology. Every student ought be given the tools to create new ventures—to protect their intellectual property, and to pursue and profit from their dreams on their “Hero’s Odyssey” into entrepreneurship. For it is along that odyssey that the long-term “wealth of nations” is generated. –http://artsentrepreneurship.com

3. Refusal of the Call: Voices tell you that you aren’t good enough. Friends, parents, teachers, bosses, and your own internal voice.

Seek mentorship from those who have done, for they will say, “yes you can.”

4. Meeting the Mentor: With newfound energy you seek mentorship—you turn to the Great Books & Classics—The Odyssey & The Inferno—Shakespeare & The Bible, Franklin, Lincoln, Jefferson, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Mentorship surrounds us. Wisdom comes from all walks of life. So listen, watch, and read. And then read some more—for those books which have lasted have lasted via the profound mentorship they provide.

The USPTO has resources dedicated to artists, musicians, authors, and creators.

Nolo.com has wonderful books for artists, authors, and creators. Two of my favorites are Patent it Yourself and Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights.

5. Calling the Bluff: Nobody knows the hand you hold. And you can’t see theirs. But it seems—yes—they’re bluffing. So you call ‘em and raise ‘em, and you let them see this .45 revolver by your side—the Truth of the Great Books and Classics. You’re going to surf that dream on home.

Dr. E added the “calling the bluff” stage to Campbell’s outline. You gotta call the postmodern bluff. Postmodern Wall Street transfers the risk to you and the wealth to themselves. Postmodern academia sells expensive degrees that often don’t teach much of value, instead teaching the exact opposite, opposing classical entrepreneurship. Postmodern politics and literature have replaced plot and character with hype, and Hollywood has replaced Epic Story with reality TV and remakes of seventies sitcoms.

Call the bluff, live the renaissance, and vast wealth will be yours.

Resources: your ideals and dreams are your greatest resources.

6. Crossing the Threshold: Empowered by classical mentors, you gain the courage to call the bluff.And so you set out, crossing that point of no return. You have no choice but to succeed. Once you’re on that wave, you’ve got but one choice—ride it.

Suddenly the words of the Greats take on a new, more immediate meaning. Watch Braveheart, The Matrix, The Outlaw Jose Wales, and A Fistful of Dollars. Take those ideals off the silver screen, take them out of the books, for ideals are most useful tools in reaching your most valuable assets—your passions and dreams.

For a couple hundred dollars you can incorporate at bizfilings.com or legalzoom.com and get a taxpayer EIN for your new business bank account and credit card. As of today, you are your own business, and you can take Mark Cuban’s investment advice—”invest in You, Inc.”

Resources: legalzoom.com / bizfilings.com

7. The Road of Trials: It ain’t easy out here. Some statistics say that 90% of small businesses fold in five years. An infinitesimal percentage of novels are published and screenplays optioned. But you do it anyway, as did everyone who ever succeeded. To take no risk would be teh greater risk, as time flies on by regardless. So you patent it, trademark it, copyright it, and live it.

“Every fighter has a plan,” Mike Tyson once said, “until they get hit.” But that’s the joy of battle—for out here alone do we ever find our true constitution—our ability to innovate and think on our feet, and still prevail. It is this long, rugged road which presents a vast opportunity for you to define your brand, for you to translate your internal character into definitive destiny, for you to earn your name. For brands are ultimately not defined by logos nor words, but via action. The word “brand” comes to us from cowboys who would brand their cattle, and the brand was only ever as good as the cowboy’s honor—the cowboy’s name. And so too will your name and trademark ultimately be defined by your characteron the road of trials.

We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. All virtue is summed up in dealing justly. –Aristotle

So follow your dream, and tell the world, “My name is __________.”

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,

I sound my barbaric YAWP over the roofs of the world.

—Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

AGENT SMITH:

You hear that Mr. Anderson?… That is the sound of inevitability… It is the sound of your death… Goodbye, Mr. Anderson…

NEO:

My name… is Neo!

—The Matrix

I am Odysseus, great Laertes’ son,

Known for my cunning throughout the world,

And my fame reaches even to heaven.

—Homer’s Odyssey (9.12-23)

WILLIAM WALLACE:

I am William Wallace! And I see a whole army of my countrymen, here in defiance of tyranny. You’ve come to fight as free men… and free men you are. What will you do with that freedom? Will you fight?

My name is Kiiiiiiid Rooock! —Kid Rock’s breakout album, Devil Without a Cause.

Resources: your favorite artists, authors, and entertainers, for they all remind us of our own soul’s individuality via theirs. Regsiter your trademark at uspto.gov!

8. Tests, Allies, Enemies: Even when your business is launched, when your screenplay is being produced, there will yet be those forces that oppose and sabotage. But too, loyal friends will emerge, and a Fellowship will form.

And you shall find those best of friends that one only finds away out here, along this odyssey—they too left the ordinary world long ago and set off to follow their ideals by faith alone, and Destiny brought you together.

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remember’d;

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;

For he to-day that sheds his blood with me

Shall be my brother. . .

Henry V, William Shakespeare

9. Supernatural Aid: Fortune favors the bold. –Virgil

Away out here, something magical happens. A stroke of luck that only means something because of the risk you took. You took a chance, called the bluff, and caught the wave just right. So it is that “chance favors the bold,” and “God helps those that help themselves.”

Open source software, in all its robust freedom, can provide that seemingly supernatural aid. Software is labor immortalized, and open source has bestowed us with not only LAMP (Linux, Apache, MYSQL, PHP/PYTHON/PERL/RUBY) servers, but it offers free and robust solutions for ecommerce, content management, blogging, album hosting, and more.

Fantastico allows for the quick and easy installing of leading open source application such as wordpress (blogging), joomla/drupal/ postunke (content management), and cubecart/ oscommerce/ zencart (ecommerce). Hostgator accounts come with Fantastico and the intuitive cpanel interface. Also check out hotscripts.com for more free software.

Don’t be afraid to get under the hood and “teach yourself” linux/php/ mysql/apache in ten minutes, twenty-four hours, or fourteen days—you know those books. Hard work and studious industry is the best supernatural aid there is!

If you would have a faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself. –Benjamin Franklin

And now it’s your turn to give someone a break—to provide trusting mentorship. In teaching we are always learning; and so often it is the student becomes the mentor, as wisdom flows from all walks off life.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him. –Galileo Galilei

Should you ever find yourself waiting around to be helped, reach out and help someone—give ‘em a break.

Resoucres: Fantastico, phpscripts.com, and elance & craiglist (for help installing and building websites!)

10. Stringing the Bow/Seizing the Sword: Degrees, money, and titles mean little out here—victory goes to those with integrity—those with honor, courage, and commitment. For ideals alone—character, honor, and integrity—can string eternity’s bow.

WILLIAM WALLACE:

Now tell me, what does that mean to be noble? Your title gives you claim to the throne of our country, but men don’t follow titles, they follow courage. Now our people know you. Noble, and common, they respect you. And if you would just lead them to freedom, they’d follow you. And so would I.

Ideals are your most valuable assets—they are those entities which inspired those dreams that awoke you long ago—the dream that haunted your days, always beckoning you to embark on this odyssey. As Aristotle tells us that the plot is the soul of a work, and that the action must be married to the ideals, so it is that Odysseus’s physical stringing of the bow but represents the moral order that Zeus and Athena favor—the right of a man to his home and wife, to his life, liberty, and happiness, as our Founding Fathers, who were good friends of Homer’s, testified.

They all fall away, one by one, until one is left with Virgil and Homer, and perhaps Homer alone. –Thomas Jefferson

11. The Showdown/Ordeal: It’s been a long time coming. You just wanted to live in peace and harmony, but that boss/bureaucrat/outlaw antagonist just wouldn’t let you. But you call them out, and now you get to stand toe-to-toe; face-to-face with a new book, or invention, or film, or venture that serves the world in a better way.

So often it is that entrepreneurship, and newfound knowledge, is opposed. Bruno was burned at the stake for suggesting that the stars are but distant suns, Galileo was placed under house-arrest for suggesting that the earth moved, and Einstein stated, “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” “No good deed goes unpunished,” and Socrates and Jesus were sentenced to death for seeing a better way and speaking the simple truth to power. Steve Jobs was kicked out of Apple—the company he founded. Read Richard Branson’s biography, and you will see the hundreds of showdowns he partook in, including being sued by British Airways for taking on a corporate-state monopoly with better means for air travel—Virgin Airlines. So often it is that the prophet is not known in his own home, and even Odysseus must disguise himself as a beggar in his very own house, as the suitors to his wife, who are laying his estate to waste, taunt and belittle him.

But at the end of the day, there is but one who can string the bow in the showdown. There is but one with your passions and talent—but one with your vision and integrity—but one with your character that can render your soul’s ideals real, come hell or high water. So call the saddle up, ride into town, call the bluff, and face ‘em down at high noon. Take pride in the fact that they scoffed at your ideas—all it means is that they can never own them; and someday you will have to remind them of this, as all bureaucrats are united by their relentless quest to first belittle and then take credit for all great ideas.

12. Rescue From Without/The Resurrection: So often it is that just as one wins, the jealous, greedy bureaucracy—the machine—moves in to seize control. In every Western, after our hero wins the showdown fair and square, yet another Outlaw draws a bead on him—to shoot him in the back.

Jobs was kicked out of Apple, but then brought back to take it to new heights. Richard Branson lost Virgin Records, but was reborn in Virgin Airlines and a thousand other ventures. John C. Bogle founded Vanguard upon the ideals set forth in his Princeton Senior Thesis, and now he pens inspirational books and speeches based on those very same ideals. Every entrepreneur ought read Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, as it reminds us that entrepreneurship’s greater purpose is to serve.

Those who live by ideals have no need to fear death, as Socrates realized, for the soul is immortal. Though some bureaucracy rejects the implementation of your ideals, they can’t steal nor kill those ideals—for America recognizes the entrepreneur’s rights.

Resources: The Declaration of Independence and Constitution again and again.

13. The Road Back/Return with the Elixir/Freedom: You took ownership in your dreams and destiny—you called the bluff and caught the wave, and the Truth set you free.

You added to the wealth of the world—the long-term wealth of the world—via the simple act of following your passions and dreams.

And everything you learned on this Hero’s Odyssey will come in handy along tomorrow’s odyssey. We’ll be setting out at dawn with Autumn and Ranger, with Homer and Dante, riding with the fellowship of immortal souls—with the Great Books and Classics—on towards your next venture.

Like Richard Branson and Steven Jobs, you can do it again in a new realm!

The above ITConversations Podcast interview resulted because of the Hero’s Odyssey Lecture Dr. E delivered to a packed room of a few hundred people at SXSW in 2007. The SXSW Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship podcast can be found here. Also in 2007, in honor of the Kauffman Foundation’s Entrepreneurship Week, Dr. E delivered a similar lecture at Pepperdine University’s Macgill Business Symposium, titled “Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship: Buffett, Bogle, Cuban, Campbell, Smith, Einstein, Shakespeare, Frodo, Neo, and Skywalker.” The basic lecture may found here and here. Dr. Elliot McGucken’s 2007 “Hero’s Odyssey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology” Entrepreneurship Week Lecture:

In May 2009, Dr. E delivered a similar speech at the opening keynote at the three-day Syracuse Univeristy Entrepreneurship Classroom (a Kauffman campus), which hosted MBA/humanities/engineering faculty teaching/interested in teaching classes on entrepreneurship:

“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this luke-warmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries … and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it. “– Niccolo Machiavelli

Here’s some cool feedback (from professors @ Syracuse University) about the “hero’s odyssey” approach to entrepreneurship from the professors:

I especially appreciated the theme of your presentation, naturally because it affirmed my view that entrepreneurship is what people do if they are lucky and they’d appreciate help in doing it. I think that entrepreneurship could be the enabler of human potential; but then I tell my classes, “I’ve given up on big religion in favor of entrepreneurship.” . . . This is a presentation I give in Syracuse high school classes as part of a career awareness program. I’ve worked on this presentation for about 5 years and I was surprised and pleased to see that I had followed Campbell’s monomythic hero pattern. I would sure appreciate any thoughts you might have.

Dear Elliot (Dr E), I just wanted to tell you again how enjoyable and inspiring meeting you was. As a life-long lover of mythology . . . discovering your research was like Christmas for my brain. I have gone over these same old stories many times from the perspective of mythology, theology, and even anthropology and etymology, but applying the classics to business gives me yet another reason to revisit these works and see them as new again. Engaging art students in business classes is challenging, and I am excited to try this new method in the fall. You have changed the way I will approach teaching entrepreneurship.

Elliot, This is very good work; I feel like evangelizing it. And I probably will, Deb Streeter, Cornell eclips, has offered to help pump up my E presentation. I’ll send it along; I imagine I’ll link to your work.

Dr. E, Your research has also spawned a thoughtful analysis of the tragic figure and anti-hero. For instance, Van Gogh either sold one or zero paintings in his life (depending on who’s talking) of the over 500 he made, was kicked out of the clergy, he couldn’t even get the prostitute he loved to marry him, and when his mental illness became so severe his painting suffered, he botched his own suicide, shooting himself in the stomach and taking three days to die. He suffered his entire life, yet is one of the most celebrated and cherished artists in history. He writes about the beauty he sees in mundane things all around him and his paintings truly capture that, but he could never sell that vision to others or live it himself. . . .Or Romeo and Juliet who pulled off a brilliant plan, but then died anyway because they made assumptions, were reactionary, and made hasty decisions. . . Amazon has promised to notify me when your book becomes available. I will purchase it and try to get the rest of the faculty here to too. Thanks again Elliot. It was an honor and a privilege sir.

Even as Princetonian David Billington became one of my guiding spirits on the culture of the engineer, so Elliot McGucken, Princeton Class of 1991, has lifted my spirits on the culture of the humanist. Dr. McGucken received a B.A. in Physics from Princeton, and earned a Ph.D. in physics at University North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Now teaching at Pepperdine University, he has created a business school course entitled “Artistic Entrepreneurship and Technology,” linking today’s Information Age to the great values of Western Civilization. His required reading list includes Homer’s Odyssey, and Dante’s Inferno.

Believe it or not, “Dr. E.” discovered my 2005 book, The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism when he was browsing in a bookstore. It formed one of three foundations for reading in his course. When he told me that, of course I was thrilled. (Heck, truth told, astonished!) But hear the concern McGucken expresses as he explains what is happening to Humanistic education, in words far better than my own:“When I first embarked on this venture four years ago, I had thought that common sense would be a bit more common, and that Homer and Bogle would naturally and immediately prevail in the academy with nary a battle. Well, amongst the students a vast market exists for the words that speak to the immortal sensibilities of their souls (and thus time is on our side!), but the modern university’s bureaucracy has evolved to oppose classical wisdom, as has Wall Street and our government, which all too often see more profit in trying to purchase virtue and enduring wealth by pursuing mere money; rather than focusing first on virtue and ‘doing the right thing,’ reminding us of Socrates’ belief that we should ‘care about the greatest improvement of the soul . . . virtue is not given by money, but from virtue comes money and every other good of man.’

“During each faculty meeting,” he continues, “I need to justify why I am teaching Homer and Socrates in a business class of all things. I have been tempted to ask the question, “Well, can you find anything of greater and more-enduring value?” But I have refrained . . . despite the daily news which screams at us regarding the epic failures of the current system and all that the soulless MBA curriculum hath wrought, the contemporary academy yet refuses to see, because the MBA is a license to partake in the $500 billion of innovation-free, annual wealth-transfer [to the financial sector] that compromises, erodes, and opposes capitalism’s moral premises. The risk-taker ought get the reward, and the primary purpose of an institution ought be to serve–not to tempt and take.

Quoting from Who Killed Homer, McGucken notes that “This ignorance of Greek wisdom should be of crucial interest to every American. The Greeks bequeathed us constitutional government, individual rights, freedom of expression, an open economy, civilian control of the military, separation of religious and political authority, private property, free scientific inquiry and open dissent. But it is foolish—and dangerous—to embrace these conventions . . . without understanding that the Greeks also insisted that such energy was to be monitored and restrained by a host of cultural protocols that have nearly disappeared: civic responsibility, philanthropy, a world view that is rather absolute, a brief that life is not nice, but tragic and ephemeral . . . an entire way of looking at the world, a way diametrically opposite to the new gods that now drive America: therapeutics, moral relativism, blind allegiance to progress and the glorification of material culture.”

So you can see why Dr. E and I get along so well! We have reached common ground in loving the classics and in seeking the triumph of virtue and ethics—and even fiduciary duty!—over the vanishing values of the day. It is time to accept our responsibility to reverse the recent triumph of unfettered business conduct, and fight to restore the professional conduct that once permeated our society. –John C. Bogle, Founder and Former CEO of the Vanguard Group, Aspiring to Build a Better Financial World, Princeton Varsity Club, 2009

In late 2009/early 2010 Dr. Elliot McGucken released a “Hero’s Odyssey Mythology” ebook which would accompany him on lectures, and which the students and faculty could download. Work on several related manuscripts continues today, and it will soon be published in hard-copy, physical form. Dr. E shared the book on his websites and Hero’s Odyssey Business/Arts/Entrepreneurship Facebook page:

” Myths and creeds are heroic struggles to comprehend the truth in the world. –Ansel Adams

A philosophy of Exalted Entrepreneurship and practical resources for an epic
hero’s odyssey of your own making.The New York Times reported, “McGucken’s course (Arts Entrepreneurship &
Technology 101). . . rests on the principle that those who create art should have the skills to own it, profit from it and protect it. “It’s about how to make your passion your profession, your avocation your vocation, and to make this long-term sustainable,” he said. –New York Times Small Business

老子 Lǎozǐ (c. 4th century B.C.) Call to Adventure: The Tao Te Ching
A odyssey of a thousand li starts with a single step. –Tao

Keith Hinkle, vice president for advancement and public affairs at Pepperdine underscored the importance of the foundation’s grant. “The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s support of Dr. McGucken’s work is already having an impact on Pepperdine students. Elliot is among, if not the leading scholar in America on the subject of artistic entrepreneurship and technology and we are fortunate he is leading the dialogue here at Pepperdine.”

Dr. McGucken, who launched the ArtsEntrepreneurship.com program at UNC Chapel Hill, received his bachelor’s of arts degree in physics from Princeton and his Ph.D. in physics from UNC Chapel Hill. His dissertation on an artificial retina for the blind received several National Science Foundation (NSF) grants and a Merrill Lynch Innovations Award. The retina-chip research appeared in publications including Popular Science and Business Week, and the project continues today. He launched the Web site, jollyroger.com in 1995, and now runs over 30 sites. The New York Times deemed jollyroger.com “simply unprecedented,” adding that the site “teems with discussion, the kind that goes well beyond freshman lit 101.”

Dr. E keynoting the 2009 Syracuse University Entrepreneurship Classroom: Note that most everyone is still awake!

ARTS ENTREPRENEURSHIP: HOW TO BE A HERO by Mike Vargo From The Kauffman Foundation’s 2007 Thoughtbook (Interview conducted summer 2006) Elliot McGucken has an artful way of teaching entrepreneurship to artists. He explains the entrepreneurial process, for instance, by comparing it to the classic “hero’s odyssey” in myths and epics. Typically, in the first stage of the story, the hero embarks on a quest that requires “separation” or “departure” from the familiar world (here McGucken finds strong parallels to the decision to start a company) — and after many twists, the odyssey ends with the hero’s “return” (exit strategy). “Every aspect of classical story, including antagonists, mentors, reversals of fortune, and the seizing of the sword from the stone, may be found in the realm of entrepreneurship,” McGucken claims. And there’s more. The college course he designed — open to students in any major, working in any of the visual, literary or performing arts — mixes classical concepts with cutting-edge practical advice, such as how to use open-source DRM (digital rights management) to keep the ogres from snatching your profits. The course is called Artistic Entrepreneurship and Technology 101. First offered this past spring at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, with support from the Kauffman Campuses Initiative, it has drawn rave reviews from students. The core message of AE&T 101 is that “ideals are real,” and in fact are practical: that you don’t have to choose between being a starving artist or selling out. By starting a venture of your own that combines high artistic standards with sound business principles, you can “rock your dreams,” McGucken tells students; he says that in the arts as in business, pursuing “fundamental value” pays off. McGucken began his career in science. In the late 1990s he was a promising young physics researcher with a faculty position at Davidson College. But he wrote on the side and had long loved classical literature, from the Greeks to the great novelists. Feeling that these got too little attention nowadays he had launched a Web site, jollyroger.com, to host online forums about the Great Books and to offer his own commentary. And lo, the quest drew eyeballs. Before long, he says, “the advertising income from jollyroger was more than I was making from my professorship.” By the 2005-06 academic year McGucken was involved with several more arts-related Internet ventures while teaching physics part-time at UNC in Chapel Hill. There the Kauffman Campuses mission to teach entrepreneurship in all fields inspired his creation of the AE&T course, which immediately had the look of an idea whose time had come: more than 110 students applied for 40 seats. Those chosen included undergrads from the liberal and fine arts, plus artistically oriented computer-science students, MBAs, and a law student. They combined their skills on projects, actually starting arts ventures or moving them along. Some showed up with ventures well under way, like Will Hackney, a freshman with over a dozen local bands signed to a record label he’d started in high school. Pierce Freelon, an African-American Studies major and member of a hip-hop duo called Language Arts, was branching into ventures ranging from a Web site on “blackademics” to the design of a hip-hop curriculum for K-12 schools. And some were talented artists who hadn’t yet turned entrepreneurial. Hannah Sink, a student filmmaker who had shot two documentaries in Thailand with grant funding, recalls: “I just had the idea that one day, maybe in fifteen or twenty years, I’d like to start my own production company. What I learned is that I can start taking the steps now. So for me this course was about homing in on a desire I already had, and learning the tangible things: forming an L.L.C., protecting your rights, using technology.” During the course Sink and a colleague, Hope Blaylock, started Continuous Take Productions. The firm is still embryonic but the main thing, says Sink, is that “this is real. We know where we are in the process. If and when we take the next steps, we know what we have to do.” Elliot McGucken, meanwhile, has carried AE&T 101 over to Pepperdine University, where he’s a visiting professor for 2006-07. Replication and expansion of the course has thus begun, and McGucken has a larger reason for hoping the effort will grow. He sees much of today’s cultural industry as being in a “decadent state,” with big media firms giving us low-grade movies, books and other product even in the face of declining revenues: “When you put the bottom line above high ideals, both suffer,” he says. But a new wave of artist/entrepreneurs — armed with the skills to assert artistic control by starting and controlling businesses — could help turn things around. “There’s an opportunity,” McGucken says, “for a cultural renaissance.”

o 1.1.1 The Call to Adventure: Artistic passions & dreams

o 1.1.2 Refusal of the Call: Is it practical?o 1.1.3 Supernatural Aid: Use the force, Luke. The harder you work, the luckier you get.

o 1.1.4 The Crossing of the First Threshold: Business structures / market research

o 1.1.5 The Belly of the Whale: The business plan, raising funds, intellectual property*

1.2 Initiation: Building the team, incorporating

o 1.2.1 The Road of Trials: Striving toward profitablitity

o 1.2.2 The Meeting with the Goddess: First customers! Early success!

o 1.2.3 Temptation: Seeking short-term profits over long-term wealth.

o 1.2.4 Atonement with the Father: Competing or collaborating with the big guys–the Microsofts and Apples, the Hollywood studios

o 1.2.5 Realizing the core business Apotheosis

o 1.2.6 The Ultimate Boon: Newfound business acumen!

* 1.3 Return: It is all for naught without the road back!

o 1.3.1 Refusal of the Return: Don’t lose site of the core business!

o 1.3.2 The Magic Flight: Exit strategy! IPO or selling the company!

o 1.3.3 Rescue from Without: When business competition is your best friend.

o 1.3.4 The Crossing of the Return Threshold: The venture is a success!

o 1.3.5 Master of Two Worlds: You know what it takes–like Richard Branson you can do it again.

o 1.3.6 Freedom to Live: Financial freedom to pursue your dreams!!

“With my students, I make the point that when we conceive of a story, in effect we become a Protagonist in our own story: The writing process. Stumbling upon that initial story concept is like The Call To Adventure. When we type FADE IN, we Cross The First Threshold. As we write, we confront Trials (lose our way, lose our confidence) and Temptations (to quit). And eventually as we get to FADE OUT, we emerge ‘victorious’ on our own hero’s odyssey. Given that, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to find outfits like this using Campbell’s theories as business models.” —Go Into the Story: The Web’s #1 Screenwriting Blog

Student Feedback for The Hero’s Odyssey in Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology A Renaissance in the Classical Liberal Arts & Economics:

"The emphasis of ethics and morality throughout several of the books we
read impacted how I view entrepreneurship. . . John Bogle's The Battle
for The Soul of Capitalism was my favorite. . ."
"This class is a dream come true!"
"I loved the class and really enjoyed the reading."
"I truly enjoyed this class."
"I thought that Dr. E was an excellent person to teach this class,
because he has so many life experiences and stories that coincide with
the material. You can tell that he is very enthusiastic and loves this
class, which makes it much easier for students to be excited, as well."
"I learned that I can turn what I love into a living. (this is what I
liked most about the class)".

"I have never had a class like this, and I couldn't have asked for a "As long as you have determination and vision, it is possible to
move
your ideas forward."
"I have learned about the importance of studying the greats (w/a capital
G) for successful thinking and strategy. I have also learned about
computer tech. I have my own blog, and to me that's big. Computer tech
doesn't intimidate me anymore."
"The professor has an excellent background and knows what he is talking
about."
"A book that covers the wide range of topics and material in this class
would be ideal."
"This class is an awesome class. The fact that we are pursuing our
dreamsmakes this class very hands on. Dr. E--you have an awesome
teaching method/model, and I have learned more than you will ever
believe in this class."
"The Hero With a Thousand Faces stood out to me the most because it is
such a common theme I had never noticed before."
"I loved the class and felt that I gained the knowledge to launch my
venture. Thanks for a great class!"
"Such a great class..."
"I really enjoyed it."
"Good class. Keep up the good work."
"Make your passion your profession."
"I've learned much more about the business of side of arts and music;
I've always been passionate about music, and the class has helped me
refine my passion/vision."
"It has inspired me to finally stop beating around the bush and sit down
and get my business started with all of my ideas."
"This class has sparked my passion more than any other class. I keep
seeing this dream and I know I have to do it because it is the only
thing that will keep me happy. This class is my inspiration to keep
doing what I am doing."
"The class has given me a more structured framework to analyze the ideas
I have. this make it easier to assess their feasibility and actually get
started on my venture. Great source for inspiration."
Applying the steps of the Hero’s Odyssey to a business idea helps to see
things from a completely different perspective. Great for reflection."
"Great class, I really wish it was 14 weeks. Invaluable info from an
academic who has first-hand experience."
While writing my "Hero’s Odyssey," I have had time to understand how
much I care about my business ideas, and to finally decide I will do it!
"The pragmatic approach and the tremendous modernity and durability of
the content. This is a "real-life" course."
"Dr. E --your energy, encouragement, and laid-back personality have made
this class even more awesome. Thank you! Ideals are real!"
"Keep this type of class going because everyone has a dream and everyone
needs some help achieving it."
"Our band has had about ten gigs since starting this semester. We also
have a website, business cards, potential booking agency, and radio
airplay."
"I had almost abandoned my venture. I was losing interest in it, but the
class helped respark my dedication to it."
"Yes! This has been the most enlightening class that I have ever
imagined. I want to develop a multitude of artistic ventures."
"I've begun to think that I can really start the company that I want to.
I've started small, selling stuff on ebay--eventually I want to be
selling my own stuff in an online store."
"We have been hugely inspired to get gigs, build a website, and put
together a killer press package."
"I've learned too much to name everything, but I think the most
important thing I'll take away from class is the do-it-yourself
mentality, and the encouragement to follow my dreams today."
"I'm graduating this semester, but if I weren't, I'd definitely be
interested in taking further AE&T classes."
"All the information regarding internet stuff and open source software
was especially interesting to me. Also discussing legal issues such as
copyrights, trademarks, and patents was beneficial."
"Awesome course--lots of fun! Loved the quotes and the discussion forums
were so helpful! Thanks for a great (last) semester!"
"This course has helped me in a variety of ways. I've learned more about
how to write a business plan, trademarks, patents, and different types
of businesses. I have been exposed to an abundance of new information w/
great insight along w/ links, websites, and helpful texts." (E.G.: Angel
Investors, uspto.gov)
"It's great--like a pep talk at the start of each weekend."
"This class has made me realize you don't need to be an econ major or
business major to start your own business."
"This class has opened my eyes by showing me the relationship between
classics such as The Odyssey and the art of entrepreneurship."
"I enjoyed this class. It was focused and brought back the sense of the
traditional founding ideas of an American Univeristy"
"I will remember that the "Hero’s Odyssey" applies not only to
entrepreneurship, but to life in general. LIFE IS A JOURNEY, and we can
use lessons from the classics to help us along in that odyssey."
--Student
"I love Dr. E." --Student
"Thoroughly enjoyed the class." --Student
"Dr. E = The Man." --Student
"I enjoyed this class because it was applicable ato real life nd will
actually benefit me in the future!"
"Dr. E emphasizes taking control of your destiny-->such an inspiration,
thanks!"
"The emphasis of ethics and morality throughout several of the books we
read impacted how I view entrepreneurship. . . John Bogle's The
Battle
for The Soul of Capitalism was my favorite. . ."
"The books we read have given me the courage and wisdom to begin my
venture."
"You need to teach other professors how to run their class because it's
about the student and not the professors who are full of themselves and
their credentials."
"Thanks so much for teaching this course Dr. E!"
"The class showed me how success in entrepreneurship is really brought
about via actively pursuing one's passion. Books such as The
Odyssey,
The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism, etc. have specifically
taught me that entrepreneurship is not founded in specific business
practices/concepts, but in the classical ideals."
"Honestly this course has inspired me to make the ideals discussed and
books we read in this class a part of my life and future career. I plan
on continuing to study these books for the rest of my life."
"This was my favorite class!"
"Before this class, I had never thought about the connection between the
great books and the business world. I learned a lot about the hero's
journey."
"Great class--I learned so much useful information."
"Dr. E is awesome!"
"You're a great teacher and an extremely interesting person. I
definitely want a 45SURF shirt when you get some in!"
"At first I wasn't even sure how The Odyssey would apply to business,
but this class has given me a new perspective on business, life, and the
real world."
"The knowledge and information I accumulated in this class would be
extremely helpful in launching a business."
"Best Class Ever. Extremely useful and eye-opening to lots of new
ideas."

better one. I will remember all the ideas and insights. . ."
"The class has shown me how the Hero’s Odyssey is closely related to
entrepreneurship and business--I had no previous knowledge nor exposure
to these ideas."
"I am truly enjoying this course & find it very helpful for people who
are ready to take their part in the real world rather than just follow
the limitations enforced by our society."
"I have grown more aware of the patterns of the Hero’s Odyssey andhow it
follows a certain sequence of events. The main thing I have realized
about entrepreneurship is that without offering something unique or
different it is very hard to succeed."
"This was the most interesting class I have ever taken. Even though we
have no quizzes nor tests I feel I have learned so much more than I ever
could by memorizing facts. It gave me knowledge and tools that I can use
and apply in everyday life. It constantly kept my attention and made me
want to learn more."
"I will remember that to get great rewards, I cannot be afraid to take
great risks. I really enjoyed the Sara Blakely/Spanx story--it gave me a
lot of inspiration."
"Dr. E's Great! I love it!"
"what an amazing class! Thank you :)!"
"The class has opened my eyes. . .I've been deeply encouraged to embrace
my own Hero’s Odyssey."
"If there's one thing I remember from this class it will be the
inspiration to overcome obstacles and to continue to "walk the path."
Many business classes don't acknowledge the personal strength and moral
foundation required to be successful. The way you used the classics,
Bogle, and the Writer's Journey in the business context was very
inspiring and I will never forget the lessons I've learned in this
course."
"Amazing class!! By far my favorite and the most insightful class I've
ever been in!"
"I am used to a very structured class setting but this class got me out
of my comfort zone and I learned so much more . . . Thank you for taking
the time to teach us."
"You're inspiring Dr. E!! I'll definitely remember you!!"
"I had never before considered entreprneurship to an adventure. . .
Thank you very much!"
"Keep up the good work!"
"If I was to teach an entrepreneurship class, I would definietly use
your book because it provides the foundational principles students could
use in launching their venture."
"A great class! I learned so much!"
"Though I am not a business major, I feel like I would be able to launch
a venture."
"I will try to keep in contact with Dr. E after college for help w/ my
business!"
"I love this class--it's more like a mentorship than a high-stress
environment."
"A Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship book would be great! It'd be like
this class in a referenceable nutshell!"
"It's helped me with the technical aspects as well as the personal
values one needs to succeed."
"It's helped me so much to understand what it takes to start my own
business."
ARTISTIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP & TECHNOLOGY: NEW VENTURE INITIATION,
PART I The Professor:
1. shows interest and enthusiasm for the course. 5/5
5. is an excellent teacher 5/5
Part III The Overall Class Experience:
13. has enhanced my ability to think clearly, logically, independently,
and critically 5/5
14. has contributed to the development of my sense of personal values
and moral integrity 5/5
And here's the full summary:
Response
PART I The Professor:
1. shows interest and enthusiasm for the coruse. 5/5
2. is available for consultation outside of the class if needed 4.91/5
3. is prepared for class and makes good use of class time 4.91/5
4. presents course material in a clear and engaging matter 4.82/5
5. is an excellent teacher 5/5

Part II The Course:

6. is well organized. 4.91/5
7. textbook and other reading assignments are appropriate in content 5/5
8. tests and other evaluations are appropriate in content and difficulty 4.73/5
9. assignments are reasonable and appropriate in content and difficulty 4.82/5
10. is demanding in comparison to other courses. 4.55/5
11. has increased my knoweldge or understanding of the subject 4.91/5
12. is excellent 4.91/5
Part III The Overall Class Experience:
13. has enhanced my ability to think clearly, logically, independently,
and critically 5/5
14. has contributed to the development of my sense of personal values and moral integrity 5/5

CharlesLaurenFilms.com: The Purpose of Myth: It seems hard to remember, especially when people are feeling down in times like these, but our myths aren’t just there so stories can be written using their framework and convention. They aren’t there just for entertainment and movies like Star Wars, but they exist in all of our minds and are archetypes because we are supposed to use their ideas to live our lives. . . . Not surprisingly, the heroes in our own world follow the exact same chronology of life events as Frodo or Luke Skywalker. Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Mark Cuban, my buddy Lakshmi Mittal, just about everyone follows the same path. As I thought about this I found a great website (Dr. E’s herosodysseyentrepreneurship.org) which outlines the events in an entrepreneur’s life and how it relates to the ordeals that the hero must go through on his journey, which is in Campbell’s book Hero With a Thousand Faces. It was pretty cool to see this structured and in writing! Starting a business in a recession might be the perfect option for a lot of people. Companies aren’t expanding into new markets, thus leaving room if you want to sneak into a niche somewhere. In fact, most are retreating into little protective shells so they can stay in business. If you have lost your job, have some savings and have an idea about what you can do to improve the world, maybe you should consider taking the Left Hand Path and starting your own company! If you do, here is what you can expect! The site: Herosodysseyentrepreneurship.org –Charles Lauren Films

Don’t Count on It! Reflections on Investment Illusions, Capitalism, “Mutual” Funds, Indexing, Entrepreneurship, Idealism, and Heroes: “Vanguard: Saga of Heroes (Chapter 23) presents a very different interpretation than you might expect from its title. This chapter is based on a lecture I presented to Pepperdine University (CA) students, at the request of Professor Elliot McGucken, as part of his course The Hero’s Odyssey in Arts Entrepreneurship & Technology 101. “Dr. E” relies heavily upon such classics as Homer’s Odyssey and Dante’s Inferno, and honors me by including with these classics my own The Battle for The Soul of Capitalism. This essay focuses on Vanguard’s odyssey, a voyage punctuated with challenges, narrow escapes, and ultimate fulfillment. I conlude by urging introspection upon our financial leaders, an idea that failed to get much traction back in 2007 when it might have helped. But these leaders were simply making too much money, taking too much risk, and showing too little concern about the crises then building. . . -p. 436: “It’s no mean task to measure up to the high appraisal of my career that has been so generously expressed by Dr. Elliot McGucken. That he has, remarkably, placed my 2005 book, The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism, on the same reading list as The Odyssey–let alone the same planet!–adds even more to my burden in meeting the expectations of those who are aware of this background. . .” —Vanguard, Saga of Heroes, p. 469, Don’t Count on It published 2010 by John Wiley & Sons

2008: Princeton Club of Southern California: Hero’s Odyssey Renaissance Festival: Ideals in Innovation: The Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship Festival with Dr. E aims to provide students, artists, and entrepreneurs with the inspiration and tools to make their passions their professions–to protect and profit from their ideas–to take ownership in their careers and creations. This entreprenuership event celebrates the ultimate Renaissance Man–Leonardo da Vinci–while saluting “hero’s odyssey mythology” in the realms of screenwriting, videogames, film, academia, and robotics–robots inspired by da Vinci’s designs. —2008: Princeton Club of Southern California

Throughout it all, Dr. E pursued his love of Hero’s Odyssey Mythology, including his physics project which is a continuation of his research on the nature of light from his Princeton days with the late Dr. John Archibald Wheeler: Moving Dimensions Theory (Hero’s Odyssey Physics), the novel, graphic novel, and screenplay Autumn Rangers, the Hero’s Odyssey Mythology Photography collection, and the award-winning screenplay The Legend of McCoy Mountain & The Gold 45 Revolver.

So as to bring the spirit of the most popular Hero’s Odyssey in arts Entrepreneurship & Technology class to a greater audience, Dr. E has been working on several manuscripts and books, including The Hero’s Odyssey in Art, Entrepreneurship, and Technology and The Hero’s Odyssey Mythology Code of Honor, both of which draw heavily from the Hero’s Odyssey monomyth exalted in the work of Joseph Campbell and later popularized in the writings of Christopher Vogler, as well as the films Star Wars, Office Space, and The Matrix.

While working with the late Dr. J.A. Wheeler at Princeton University, Dr. E entered his third-floor Jadwin Hall Office one day to find J.A. Wheeler looking out the window at the brilliant Autumn leaves. Upon hearing Dr. E enter his office, Wheeler slowly turned, wearing his trademark jacket and tie, his fist lightly clenched, and he stated, “Today’s physics lacks the noble, and it’s your generation’s duty to bring it back.” Colby Cosh saluted the late J.A. Wheeler in the National Post, writing, “At 96, he had been the last notable figure from the heroic age of physics lingering among us. . . the student of Bohr, teacher of Feynman, and close colleague of Einstein. . . Wheeler was as much philosopher-poet as scientist, seizing on Einsteinian relativity early . . . He was ready to believe in the new world before most physicists. . .” The noble Wheeler, alongside the giants of his day who pioneered quantum mechanics and relativity, created immeasurable wealth via the simple, heroic pursuit of Truth and Beauty in the contemplation of the nature of light. For quantum mechanics, born of the study of light resides at the center and circumference of all our modern computers and communications, alongside Maxwell’s Equations and Relativity (which powers GPS), also born of the study of light. And thus, in many ways, Dr. E’s book The Hero’s Odyssey Mythology Code of Honor is dedicate to John Wheeler and Jack Bogle, who understood, like Socrates et al., that the greater wealth is to be found by pursuing the higher ideals over the bottom line, that entrepreneurship operates best when it humbles itself before epic mythology, so as to honor and learn from all those archetypal heroes who have gone before.

Students find dream jobs In class, passions fuel business plans: Dr. Elliot McGucken in the DTH

UNC’s Daily Tar Heel Reports on 3/27/2006:Students find dream jobs In class, passions fuel business plans
Erin Wiltgen, Staff WriterFor many, childhood and adolescence pass in a blur of hobbies and passionate adventures, activities seeped in a deep-seated excitement and love inherent in a particular pastime.In UNC professor Elliot McGucken’s “Artistic Entrepreneurship and Technology” class, students and teachers work to “make your passion your profession,” transforming students’ dreams and interests into potential paths for the future.The unique course allows students interested in fields such as photography, video games, painting, classical music and film production to explore commercial and social ventures in the arts.They search for and create a plan based in entrepreneurship, which supports and nurtures their individual visions.”A lot of times school tells you that your dreams aren’t important,” says McGucken, a physics professor. “But in reality dreams are your most important asset.”The class consists of an independent project that includes three presentations, guest lectures and small-group collaboration.Sophomore Phil Gennett’s project is a clothing line, and he is trying to find a manufacturer for his creations.He also intends to set up a talent agency.”I want to blow it up into a new sort of entertainment, like American Idol, but also as a social network for opportunities,” Gennett says.Sophomore Ryan Dean is working on multiple projects. He runs a graphic design company called Cellar Door Design. He also has joined with a photographer in the class to create CD booklet artwork for the second album by his band, The Anchor Comes Home.”What’s most helpful is meeting like-minded people,” Dean says.”The best thing about this class is establishing relationships with the other students and collaborating with each other.”Stefan Estrada, graduate student and teaching assistant for the class, shares a similar view.”The people in this class have ambition and a vision of things they want to accomplish,” Estrada says.”This isn’t a class where you get something done and forget about it. It continues to maybe become your career.” . . .. . . McGucken also says that entrepreneurship classes give students a broader knowledge base.”It’s an irony that the University requires you to specialize when people typically end up switching jobs five or six times and need to know about a lot of different things,” McGucken says.At 5 p.m. Tuesday, the class will host a show at Local 506 on Franklin Street.The show, called “Rocky Raccoon’s High Tech Hollywood Hip Hop Hedge Fund Hoedown and Fashion/Art/Photography/Video Games Showdown” will feature musical and spoken-word performances, fashion shows, film and video screenings and displays of visual art and photography.The show is designed as a networking event and as a benefit for the Music Maker Relief Foundation and three web sites – OSCommerce.com, Joomla.org and Gallery.menalto.com.The Music Maker foundation works to help pioneers of Southern musical traditions gain recognition and meet their financial needs.One goal of the show, and the class itself, is “to build new cultural centers,” McGucken says.”The University has been separated artificially,” he says.”This class has naturally collapsed all the barriers between business and art and law, putting all the power in the hands of the creator.” –Dr. E in UNC’s Daily Tar Heel Reports on 3/27/2006

THE HERO’S ODYSSEYMONOMYTH

Nikon D800E14-24mm F/2.8 lens7 exposures @ 1 EV.Malibu, CA

Now and then we happen across that complete scene which has it all—the Aristotlean beginning, middle, and end—the mixed sky, the sunlit clouds reflected in the rock-strewn, moving water, and the last light of the day catching the reeds and trees. Everyone recognizes this most popular photograph, for no matter where they live about the watery globe, they have experienced its foundational, universal elements. And thus I named it “The Hero’s Odyssey Monomyth,” as it reminds us of the common beauty of those universal ideals and timeless myths waiting to guide and inspire our lives.

Attached please find a draft of a syllabus for Artistic Entrepreneurship.The structure derives from the hero’s monomythic classical plot structure, viewing the entrepreneur as a hero on a journey, trying to achieve a dream or realize a calling. This “artistic” approach on the website has gotten a lot of positive feedback, and all the students are coming in with a dream/calling. It also helps give a natural structure to a relatively vast field. :)The structure also makes sense with regards to the ultimate student deliverables–a full business plan and a functoning prototype or live ecommerce presence. The metric for the students, as well as for the class as a whole, are practically the same–has the hero transformed their vision into a sustainable venture?Each class will be a production. I will begin each class with a lecture, usually bolstered by a tech demo or multimedia presentation. Tuesdays will focus on the general basics of artistic entrepreneurship–the nutsa nd bolts of business, law, and tech–and Thursdays will be marked by the “Thursday Closeup” which will delve into specific industries and cases, while also hosting live guest speakers.The class will be interactive–“What are the best technologies for this venture?” “What is the best corporate structure?” “Could this be protected by a patent, copyright, or trademark?” will mark class discussions.In the attached syllabus, I have left the two weeks before the final project presentations blank. I was hoping to take suggestions for speakers and topics, or just receive some general feedback.Also, I have about 300 pages of a textbook complete. I will have a bound book available in the first couple weeks of class. It will be print-on-demand and thus easily edited. It’s been a lot of work, and has a ways to go, but it’s a long-term project which will continually improve. “Release early and often,” is the open source software developer’s mantra.. . .thanks for the feedback,Elliot

Teresea Ciulla of Entrepreneur Magazine writes, “Can you actually make your passion your profession? According to Dr. Elliot McGucken, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who’s teaching the university’s first “Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101” class, the answer just may be yes. McGucken’s class, which is comprised of a group of 45 students majoring in law, business, art, computer science, journalism and music, focuses on teaching students about creating value over just making money, about letting their higher ideals guide the bottom line. After all, as McGucken says, “Successful companies aren’t successful because they make money—they’re successful because they create value.” Class projects range from a classical music video to a hip hop curriculum and textbook to an online art gallery to a freshman’s record label that’s signed more than ten bands to a social network being programmed by three computer science majors. Students are seeing that to the degree they succeed in creating useful art and ventures, they’ll be able to support their passions with a profitable business. . .Looks like McGucken’s found a way to inspire a new generation of artistically minded entrepreneurs to follow their passions—and make a living.”

Class Structure: AE&T will be based upon the stages of Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces. Every entrepreneurial venture has an Aristotlean three-act structure with a beginning, middle, and end; and every aspect of classical story, including the call to adventure, crossing the threshold, antagonists, mentors, reversals of fortune, the seizing of the sword from the stone, and the return on home, may be found in the realm of entrepreneurship and the life of entrepreneurs. Every class will begin with a general lecture, followed by a “closeup” lecture focusing on case studies or specific verticals, followed by class participation and presentations. Visiting speakers will join us from time to time.

Class Texts: Dr. E will provide excerpts form his forthcoming books, Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101 and Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship. John Bogle’s Battle for the Soul of Capitalism and Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces, Nolo’s Patents, Trademarks, and Copyrights, and the Rich Dad’s Own Your Own Corporation are also required.

Class Mentors: Students will seek out and study both classical and contemporary mentors.

Fundamental Class Concept: IDEALS ARE REAL: The same ideals which guide higher art also guide business and law—ideals will be your most valuable asset on this journey. Artistic entrepreneurs create both monetary and spiritual wealth by following ideals.

Class Multimedia: The class will focus heavily on live technology demos including ecommerce, video game technologies, digital rights management, social networks, digital production and distribution, videos, and more.

Student Deliverables: An independent project will be the focus for each student. Each student will research and deliver a full business plan (15+ pages), and operating venture, work of art, collection, or production. The theme will be manifesting a single idea in multiple mediums, including web pages, blogs, and wikis. Students can work in groups up to three members, and each group will be responsible for several presentations, including a final twenty minute presentation at the semester’s end.

Student Blog: Every student will blog their journey, including resources, reflections, and insights.

Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, by Larry Lessig

Nolo.com

Business/Entrepreneurship:

Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill

The Warren Buffett Way, by Bill Miller

The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki

The Big Picture : The New Logic of Money and Power in Hollywood by Edward Jay Epstein

Own Your Own Corporation: by Garrett Sutton, Robert T. Kiyosaki, Ann Blackman

Classics:

The Western Canon by Harold Bloom

Shakespeare

The Inferno, Dante

The Odyssey, Homer

The Bible

Biography:

Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography

Losing My Virginity : How I’ve Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson

iCon: Steve Jobs : The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business by Jeffrey S. Young, William L. Simon

Technology:

Slashdot.org

Web Resources:

wikientrepreneur.org

artsbusinesstech.com/forum

artsentrepreneurship.com

nolo.com, uspto.gov, slashdot.org, gamasutra.com, variety.com

libertyfilmfestival.com/libertas, afrfilmfestival.com

Welcome to the Hero’s Odyssey

Welcome to The Hero’s Odyssey in Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101. The center and circumference of the class will be an independent project in which you will follow Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Odyssey in studying an entrepreneurial venture. Both the class structure and your final presentation will be based upon the Hero’s Odyssey outlined below. The final presentation will be delivered in the form of a paper, a blog, and a wiki webpage.

The venture for your class project can be one of your own creation, or you can choose to study established artistic ventures such as Walden Media, Electronic Arts, Youtube, Apple, Google, or Napster. Or you can focus upon innovative, entrepreneurial projects within larger companies such as the iPod, flickr, yahoo TV. The lives of entrepreneurs such as Steven Jobs, Mel Gibson, or Richard Branson would also make excellent projects as the entrepreneur’s life parallel’s the hero’s odyssey. Take advantage of our close proximity to Hollywood—seek out mentorship and advice from people in the industry—always be polite and grateful.

No matter the venture, the final paper should address the following stages and aspects of your chosen topic in the context of Jospeh Campbell’s Hero’s Odyssey:

Ordinary World

Call to Adventure

Refusal of the Call

Meeting With the Mentor

Crossing the First Threshold

Tests, Allies, Enemies

Approach

Supreme Ordeal

Reward

The Road Back

Resurrection

Return With the Elixir

Another form of Campbell’s Hero’s Odyssey is as follows:

1 Departure (or Separation): Taking that first step–blog your vision.

1.1.1 The Call to Adventure: Artistic passions & dreams

1.1.2 Refusal of the Call: Is it practical?

1.1.3 Supernatural Aid: Use the force, Luke. The harder you work, the luckier you get.

1.1.4 The Crossing of the First Threshold: Business structures / market research

1.1.5 The Belly of the Whale: The business plan, raising funds, intellectual property

2 Initiation: Building the team, incorporating, setting out

1.2.1 The Road of Trials: Striving toward profitability

1.2.2 The Meeting with the Goddess: First customers! Early success!

1.2.3 Temptation: Shifting marketplaces.

1.2.4 Atonement with the Father: Competing or collaborating with the big guys

1.2.5 Apotheosis: Realizing the core business.

1.2.6 The Ultimate Boon: Newfound business acumen!

3 Return: Exit Strategy

1.3.1 Refusal of the Return: Don’t lose site of the core business!

1.3.2 The Magic Flight: Exit strategy! IPO or selling the company!

1.3.3 Rescue from Without: When business competition is your best friend.

1.3.4 The Crossing of the Return Threshold: The venture is a success.

1.3.5 Master of Two Worlds: The entrepreneur knows what it takes now, can do it again.

1.3.6 Freedom to Live: Financial freedom to pursue further ventures/dreams.

THE HERO’S ODYSSEY IN

ARTISTIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP & TECHNOLOGY 101

SYLLABUS

CLASS # 1

THEME: THE ORDINARY WORLD

What is the state of the industry? Where lie the opportunities in artistic entrepreneurship & technology? The decline of the Hollywood box office and classic storytelling on Wall street and Main Street, in academia, publishing, and the movies.

Lecture: Dr. McGucken presents a birds-eye view of several industries/technologies including digital rights management, video gaming, Hollywood, NY publishing, tying them all to the classics and Epic Story.

Web Readings: Variety.com, Gamasutra.com, Slashdot.org—these should be checked every day—slashdot.org regularly links to leading articles in all areas of business and technology.

Forum: Describe the “ordinary world”—the state of the art—in the realm of your chosen venture.

org project: to be discussed in class.

CLASS # 2

THEME: THE CALL TO ADVENTURE

IDEALS ARE REAL: The same ideals which guide higher art also guide business and law—ideals will be your most valuable asset on this journey. Ideals will be your light saber and One Ring.

Lecture: Dr. McGucken’s DVD: Welcome to Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology 101, featuring Emmy-award-winning Kate Wright on Storytelling (UCLA conference), singer/ songwriter Vaughan Penn (Laguna Beach, Dawson’s Creek, Providence) and lead level designer at Epic Games (Unreal Tournament, Gears of War) on the future of Hollywood and game development tools at the e3expo.com in LA. Artistic Entrepreneurship is high adventure.

The Fundamental Laws underlying AE:

The Congress shall have Power to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

—The United States Constitution, Section 8, Clause 8

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

–The United States Constitution, Bill of Rights, First Amendment

Assignment: Start a blog at blogger.com or anywhere else. Start blogging your venture’s journey. You will link to books, websites, mentors, and friends throughout the class. Sign up for google adwords and place them on your blog! You are now making money off your passions—you are an artistic entrepreneur. So often it is that our stories of following our dreams become of use to others. Your blogged journey will become a map for others. Synthesize your venture—you will give a one minute “logline” presentation in the next class, to facilitate the forming of groups. Rock your dreams!

Forum: Characterize your call to adventure—how do you hope to make things better?

org project: to be discussed in class.

CLASSES # 3, 4

THEME: SEPARATION, EMBARKING ON THE JOURNEY

Lecture: 1) The new digital landscape. Dr. McGucken gives a bird’s eye view of digital technologies for different artistic verticals, including music, movies, photography, gaming, publishing, and more. A multi-media presentation will cover digital production and distribution. We’ll surf on by sites including opensourcecms.com, phpscripts.com, epicgames.com, microsoft drm, 22surf.org, and authena.org, nolo.com, uspto.gov.

2) Dr. McGucken combines Joseph Campbell’s mythology with traditional business plan structure. Treat your business plan as an Epic Story! Every good story, and every business, has a beginning, middle, and end. Every good story, and every business, has its protagonists and antagonists, its triumphs and failures, its romance, comedy, adventure, and definitive end goal or exit strategy. You will write your own feature length movie as you live your dream. Everyone will fill out the following chart for the next class.

Business Plan

Artistic Plan

* Executive summary/ explains the basic business model/ gives rationale for the strategy

* Back story All classic stories, such as Hamlet and the Odyssey, begin in the middle. Hamlet’s father has been murdered, and Odysseus has finished fighting the war—he only wants to get on home. Dante’s Inferno begins with the words, “Halfway through my life I awoke in the dark woods.” And so too do all great businesses begin in the middle.You’ve had your dream for awhile, you’ve been honing your unique skills and talents. You’ve been building your network of friends and mentors. And now it is time to venture forth with the appropriate business structure.

The World Beyond It’s different out here. You’ve got to serve the market—the dream alone, without execution, has little value. But execution without the dream—without ideals—has no value.Out here you’ve got to make your way by marketing and defining your brand.

*Meeting With the MentorWhether your mentor is classical or contemporary, whether they are Aristotle or Trump or a professor or local business leader, you’ve got to meet with them regularly.

Meeting With the Mentor All classical mentors empower you with knowledge—with ideals. Obe Wan Kenobe taught Luke the ways of the force—an abstract ideal. Ideals are your One Ring and light saber on this journey. The art, to business, to law, ideals will guide you safely in all your decisions.

The Physical Journey All great movies have an inherently real physical setting. We loved the Millenium Falcon because it was fast, but also because it looked like a beat up piece of junk—a “bucket of bolts.”All businesses succeed because the Fellowship is willing to get their hands dirty. It’s no longer a lofty business plan—the ideals still guide us, but Frodo has got to get up the side of Mordor. And when he falls, Sam’s got to carry him. It’s hard, grueling work, but it’s got to be done to reach your distant dream.You’ve got to focus on your venture’s physical reality. From a café to a gallery to an online gallery, you’ve got to rock the physical details!

* The Meeting With the Goddess Dante had Beatrice to guide him. Frodo had Galadriel. And so too the bottom line must always be guided by the higher ideals. Dante had to be honest before Beatrice, and Frodo had to be honest before Galadriel, as both Goddesses saw all. And so too do you have to be honest when it comes to finances—if you’re not making money, your venture is not providing as good a service as it could be. Numbers don’t lie.

Facing the Antagonist Every business must face and overcome those forces which oppose it.It could be a competitor or many competitors. It could be a race against time to get to market first. It could simply be overcoming self-imposed, internal obstacles. But no matter what, you’ve got to face and defeat the antagonist.

Facing the AntagonistI magine if Luke Skywalker never destroyed the Death Star, and went off and become a lawyer instead.

Exit Strategy Every business has a beginning, middle, and end. Nobody is going to invest in it if there is no definitive end in site.

The Return On Home Hollywood movies often end with rewards ceremonies back home—Star Wars & Lord of the Rings—and weddings—just about every other movie.You get to write your business, so be sure to script a happy ending, retired on your favorite beach!

Class Participation: Each student will give a one minute presentation regarding their vision. Dr. McGucken and the rest of the class will match each vision with the appropriate technology

Assignments: 1) Blog about the technology you will use for your venture. It can range from a simple web page to writing a proprietary application. 2) Fill out both columns of the above chart, mixing and matching art and business. You will flesh it out and it will become your 20 page business plan.

Reading: Go to the library or a bookstore and browse through the books covering your chosen artistic pursuit—browse the arts, technology, business, and law sections. Surf the net and blog the best books and resources you find. Remember to blog your readings!! Bogle’s Battle for the Soul of Capitalism, Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces, Homer’s Odyssey

Suggested Books: Own Your Own Corporation, Small Time Operator, Nolo’s Patent it Yourself, Nolo’s Copyright, Patent, and Trademark Law, Nolo’s Small Business Legal Forms, or any other nolo book.

Forum/Blog: What are the first definitive steps of your venture?

org project: to be discussed in class.

CLASSES # 5, 6

THEMES: MEETING YOUR MENTOR

Lecture: Dr. McGucken on the all-encompassing importance of the arts in business and culture. Artists and entrepreneurs are culture’s mentors. From Aristotle’s Poetics to Dante’s Inferno to Lord of The Rings, the artistic entrepreneur must carry culture higher. The classics define the most enduring brands—the higher ideals must always lead the bottom line. Value derives from values. The Great Books & Classics contain the enduring ideals that can benefit every single business or venture, be it legal, artistic, technological, or any combination thereof.

Class: Class will present their groups, along with a one-minute logline of their group’s projects..

Assignment:. Groups must cross-link blogs. Choose five mentors, at least two classical and two contemporary, and start blogging about them. Classical mentors could be Aristotle, Benjamin Franklin, an Martin Luther King Jr. Contemporary mentors could include Russell Simmons, Richard Branson, 50 cent, Eminem, Steven Jobs, or a professor or local business leader. You will study your mentors! Find inspirational quotes reflecting Ideals harbored by your mentor, and use them in writing your business plan.

Closeup: Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Odyssey in art, technology, and busines. Class discussion regarding common themes and ideals in favorite movies and business leaders. Art arises from ideals and law descends from ideals. Ideals lead all successful business and technology ventures.

org project: to be discussed in class.

CLASSES # 7, 8

THEMES: Refusal of the Call. Supernatural Aid

AE AIN’T EASY—YOU GOTTA ROCK: TECHNOLOGY: SURFING WAVES OF INNOVATION

Lecture:

1) Refusal of the call: art and entrepreneurship are not easy. It’s true what your parents told you—being a doctor or lawyer are most likely much more secure jobs. Out here you’re going to have to work hard, think on your feet, and create! You can learn to be a doctor, or a lawyer, but nobody can teach you to rock. Study your mentors—always learn from other’s mistakes, as life is too short to learn only from your own.

But in these times of job insecurity and vanishing pensions, and with the revolutions in technology, investing in yourself—in your passions and dreams, can pay off!! Living your dreams is payment in and of itself. Value comes from values. The higher ideals inspire the bottom line.

2) Supernatural Aid: TECHNOLOGY Dr. McGucken on all the cutting edge revolutions in technology, from Open Source content management systems (CMS) to proprietary digital rights management (DRM), Dr. McGucken has been there, and he’ll be covering the best approaches for different scenarios. Live class participation as Dr. McGucken discusses best technology for class’s

2) Dr. McGucken on Copyright, Trademark, and Patent Law. Dr. McGucken traces how one idea became the novel and screenplay Autumn Rangers protected by copyright law, a fashion brand protected by trademark law, and a video game protected by patent law. All IP laws descend from same clause in the Constitution. Founding fathers, Mark Twain, and Larry Lessig on copyright law.

Assignment: Choose the appropriate business structure and blog it. Blog all intellectual property considerations for your venture. Think of those entities that make you unique which can be protected with patent, copyright, and trademark—these are the very same entities from where your value will derive.

What legal structures will you be using for your venture? What intellectual property marks your venture as unique? Is it protected by patents, copyrights, or trademarks?

org project: to be discussed in class.

CLASS # 11

THEMES: Initiation, Road of Trials, Meeting the Goddess

NO TURNING BACK. IMPORTANCE OF PASSION/TRUTH/BEAUTY

Lecture: Dr. McGucken on the trials of so many major artists and entrepreneurs. Dante in exile, Melville forgotten, Branson & Trump almost Bankrupt, Jobs fired from his own company!! Dante pens greatest poem ever, Melville pens greatest American novel, Branson & Trump rebound, and Jobs returns on home to save Apple again, reinventing it with the Macintosh and the iPod! It’s their passion that never fails—sometimes life falls short, but the passion for higher ideals keeps the artist and entrepreneur going. Ideals are Real!

Forum/Blog: What are the greatest impediments or barriers to your venture’s success?

CLASS # 12

Lecture: Dr. McGucken briefly reviews the fundamental outline of the business plan.

Class: Each group’s first five minute presentation. Brevity is the soul of wit. If you can’t pitch it in an elevator, it ain’t worth the pitch!

Forum/Blog: share your five minute pitch in as concise a form as possible.

CLASSES #13, 14

THEMES: Temptation. Atonement with the Father

ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD. THE IMPORTANCE OF IDEALS—STICKING BY YOUR GUNS—VALUE COMES FROM VALUES, NOT MONEY.

Lecture: Job’s wrong turn with the Next. Apple’s wrong turn with the Newton. The dot com boom and bust. Branson’s & Trump’s near bankruptcies. The importance of classical values—do not be tempted by the fleeting. Warren Buffett invests for eternity. “I am not an investor—I am an artist.” –Warren Buffett

SEARCHING YOUR SOUL FOR THAT UNIQUE IDEA—THAT COPYRIGHT, PATENT, OR TRADEMARK THAT IS THE KEY TO YOUR VENTURE—THE TIPPING POINT

Lecture: Uniqueness or “being different” can seem a disadvantage when you try to make it at first. Turn that uniqueness into your advantage. You are you. The best way to predict the future is to create it.

apotheosis uh-pah-thee-OH-sis; ap-uh-THEE-uh-sis, noun

plural apotheoses -seez:

1. Elevation to divine rank or stature; deification.

2. An exalted or glorified example; a model of excellence or perfection of a kind.

Class: One minute presentation on your venture’s Apotheosis. What is your “ONE IDEA?” What makes you unique? What defines your excellence?

Lecture: The exit strategy. Aristotle said that every story has a beginning, middle, and end. So does every life and every business. And you get to write it! What is your exit strategy? Just as the author is cognizant of the ending before they pick up the pen, so too must the entrepreneur be pondering the exit strategy before the business plan is written. What separates the winners from the losers? The markets? The business leaders? What is the tipping point? What happens when one doesn’t sell the business at the right time? What happens if one grows it too fast, or does not bring in outside investors/leadership when they should?

Lecture: The Nature of Risk: Chance Favors the Prepared Mind: The Harder You Work, The Luckier You Get

Reading: Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (Paperback)

by Peter L. Bernstein

Forum/Blog: Share your biggest breaks. Did they correspond to the amount of work you were doing?

org project: to be discussed in class.

CLASS #18

THEMES: The Crossing of the Return Threshold

Lecture: The Exit Strategy: You can’t stand still—“you’ve got to know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, know when to run.” You’ve got to bring it on home. How does one do this optimally? Successes and failures in exit strategies. When is it time to bring in new management? When is it time to acquire new debt or bring in new financing? When is it time to fold?

Forum/Blog: What is the exit strategy for your venture? What are the potential pitfalls of exiting too early or too late?

Lecture: The hero becomes the mentor. Share the wisdom of your journey with the class.

Class: Final project presentations / discussion.

Forum/Blog: Post your final projects.

org project: to be discussed in class.

Hero’s Odyssey Mythology Principle #78: Learn from classical heroes. Honor mythology’s epic wisdom. Let the Masters mentor you and then seek to surpass them in being yourself. “If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.” –Newton

Dr. E: Come ride with us—the mentors of all mentors—the fellowship of immortal souls who have ever headed West. Dante called Homer “the sovereign poet” while Virgil, who structured the first half of his Aeneid like Homer’s Odyssey and the second half like the Iliad from where he borrowed his lead character the “pius” Aeneas, mentored Dante on down through Hell. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “as we advance in life these things fall off one by one, and I suspect that we are left at last with only Homer and Virgil, and perhaps Homer alone.” Socrates, who mentored Plato who in turn mentored Aristotle whom Dante labeled “the master of those who know,” cited the courage of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad, when he stood for Truth and Reason over politics before the Athenian Jury. Like Achilles, Socrates knew that he would die for refusing to back down from the philosophical battle and rescind his simple teaching that “Virtue/Arete does not come from money, but money and every lasting good of man derives from Virtue.” Aristotle considered Homer the greatest of epic poets, as did Shelley and George Chapman, who designated Homer the “Prince of Poets” while translating the Iliad into the form that Abraham Lincoln would eventually read, leading Lincoln to state, “Everything that one needs to know about his fellow man may be found herein.” Alexander the Great carried Homer’s Iliad upon all his expeditions, and during his presidency, Lincoln traveled with a well-worn copy of Shakespeare’s works, while Jefferson wrote that Shakespeare ought be read in the evening and, “singled out by one who wishes to learn the full powers of the English language.” And so it is that Dr. E’s class begins with Homer and ends with Hamlet, and I invite ye to come ride with us all.

John Adams: These are what are called revolution principles. They are the first principles of Aristotle and Plato, of Livy and Cicero, of Sidney, Harrington, and Locke—the principles of nature and eternal reason.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: What is the foundation of that interest all men feel in Greek history, letters, art, and poetry, in all its periods, from the Heroic or Homeric age down to the domestic life of the Athenians and Spartans, four or five centuries later? What but this, that every man passes personally through a Grecian period. Nature and Selected Essays

Martin Scorcese (director who received an honorary doctorate @ Dr. E’s graduation at Princteon!): I’m concerned about a culture where everything is immediate and then discarded. I just read (my 12-year-old daughter Francesca) a children’s version of The Iliad. I wanted her to know where it all comes from. Every story, I told her, every story is in here, The Iliad. –The Vision Thing, Fast Company, December 2011

Thomas Jefferson: When young any composition pleases which unites a little sense, some imagination, and some rhythm, in doses however small. But as we advance in life these things fall off one by one, and I suspect that we are left at last with only Homer and Virgil, and perhaps Homer alone. –Thoughts on Prosody circa 1820

Matthew Arnold: When I say, the translator of Homer should all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of this author: that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is, both in his syntax and in his words; that he is eminently plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and, finally, that he is eminently noble.

William F. Buckley: The numbing, benumbing thought that we owe nothing to Plato and Aristotle, nothing to the prophets who wrote the Bible, nothing to the generations who fought for freedoms activated in the Bill of Rights; we are basket cases of ingratitude, so many of us. We cannot hope to repay in kind what Socrates gave us, but to live [our] lives without any sense of obligation … is spiritually atrophying.” -William F. Buckley, Jr., speech at a testimonial dinner, on receipt of the Julius Award from the School of Public Administration, UCLA, March 21, 1990.

Friedrich Nietzsche: One repays a teacher badly if one remains only a pupil.

Steve Jobs: You can tell a lot about a person by who his or her heroes are.

Salvador Dali (1904-1989): Begin to paint by learning to draw and paint like the old masters. After that, you can do as you like; everyone will respect you.

Yohji Yamamoto: Start copying what you love. Copy copy copy copy. At the end of the copy you will find your self.

Salvador Dali: Every day I realize more and more how difficult art is … but also every day I rejoice and like it. I keep on admiring the great French impressionists, Manet, Degas, Renoir. I wish they would become the most strong guiding forces in my life.

Robert Henri: Don’t worry about your originality. You could not get rid of it even if you wanted to.

Leonardo da Vinci: The youth ought first to learn perspective, then the proportions of everything, then he should learn from the hands of a good master in order to accustom himself to good limbs; then from nature in order to confirm for himself the reasons for what he has learned; then for a time he should study the works of different masters; then make it a habit to practice and work at his art.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: It took me twenty years to discover painting: twenty years looking at nature, and above all, going to the Louvre.

Francis Ford Copolla: We want you to take from us. We want you, at first, to steal from us, because you can’t steal. You will take what we give you and you will put it in your own voice and that’s how you will find your voice. And that’s how you begin. And then one day someone will steal from you.

Kobe Bryant: I have stolen all of these moves from all these great players. I just try to do them proud, the guys who came before, because I learned so much from them. It’s all in the name of the game. It’s a lot bigger than me.

Steve Jobs: Picasso had a saying: ‘Good artists copy, great artists steal.’ We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists … who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.

Simon Schama: Rembrandt ended up being the kind of painter Rubens could not possibly have imagined, much less anticipated. But for the crucial decade of his formation, the years which saw him change from being a merely good to an indisputably great painter, Rembrandt was utterly in thrall of Rubens. He pored over engravings of Rubens’s great religious paintings and struggled to make his own versions, at once obvious emulations and equally obvious variants. He borrowed poses and compositional schemes wholesale from Rubens’s histories and transferred them to his own choice of subjects.

Sir Isaac Newton: If I have seen further, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants. (Newton demonstrates both the West’s classical respect for the Greats who came before, and the primal aspect central to the West’s heroic advancement—the pioneering spirit that values Truth over convention, while yet honoring the convention. Newton cites Aristotle and Plato, who were mentored by Scorates, who was exalted by Homer: Amicus Plato — amicus Aristoteles — magis amica veritas — Plato is my friend — Aristotle is my friend — but my greatest friend is truth.)

Claude Monet (1840-1926): While still young I was fortunate enough to meet the painter Eugene Boudin who opened my eyes and taught me a love of nature.

Albert Einstein: To the Master’s honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton’s ground.

Shu Ching: Those who seek mentoring, will rule the great expanse under heaven. Those who boast that they are greater than others, will fall short. Those who are willing to learn from others, become greater. Those who are ego-involved, will be humbled and made small.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

Dr. E: When Zappos founder Tony Hsieh was asked @ amazon.com, “What is the ratio between rebelling against conventional wisdom and sticking to the good old truths in building a successful business?”, Tony answered: 1:10.

Aristotle: But Homer, as in all else he is of surpassing merit, here too—whether from art or natural genius—seems to have happily discerned the truth. –Aristotle’s Poetics

Jeremiah 6:16: Stand at the crossroads and look;
and ask for the ancient paths,
ask where is the good way, and walk therein,
and you shall find rest for your souls. –KJVB

Percy Bysshe Shelley: The poems of Homer and his contemporaries were the delight of infant Greece; they were the elements of that social system which is the column upon which all succeeding civilization has reposed. Homer embodied the ideal perfection of his age in human character; nor can we doubt that those who read his verses were awakened to an ambition of becoming like to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses: the truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and persevering devotion to an object, were unveiled to the depths in these immortal creations: the sentiments of the auditors must have been refined and enlarged by a sympathy with such great and lovely impersonations, until from admiring they imitated, and from imitation they identified themselves with the objects of their admiration. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): Defence of Poetry, 1819

George Chapman: Homer, Prince of Poets, translated according to the Greeke of his Iliads.

John Keats. 1795–1821: On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer:

MUCH have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 5
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne:
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken; 10
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes
He stared at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Nietzsche: On every side one feels that for almost a century the philologists have lived together with poets, thinkers, and artists. For this reason it has come about that that former heap of ashes and lava, which used to be called Classical Antiquity, has now become fertile, indeed thriving pasture land. –On the Personality of Homer

Dante: Virgil—O light and honor of all other poets/ may my long study and the intense love that made me search your volume serve me now./ You are my master and my author. –The Inferno. I 82-85. (As Virgil mentored Dante, so too did Homer mentor Virgil, as the first half of the Aeneid resembled the Odyssey, and the second half followed the Iliad)
Dante on Aristotle:
When I had lifted up my brows a little,
I beheld Aristotle—Master of those who know,
Sitting with his philosophic family.
All gaze upon him, and all do him honour.
There I beheld both Socrates and Plato,
Who nearer him before the others stand;
Democritus, who puts the world on chance,
Diogenes, Anaxagoras, and Thales,
Zeno, Empedocles, and Heraclitus;
Of qualities I saw the good collector,
Hight Dioscorides; and Orpheus saw I,
Tully and Livy, and moral Seneca,
Euclid, geometrician, and Ptolemy,
Galen, Hippocrates, and Avicenna,
Averroes, who the great Comment made.
I cannot all of them portray in full,
Because so drives me onward the long theme,
That many times the word comes short of fact.
—Dante

Socrates: Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.

Thomas Edison: Tom Paine has almost no influence on present-day thinking in the United States because he is unknown to the average citizen. Perhaps I might say right here that this is a national loss and a deplorable lack of understanding concerning the man who first proposed and first wrote those impressive words, ‘the United States of America.’ But it is hardly strange. Paine’s teachings have been debarred from schools everywhere and his views of life misrepresented until his memory is hidden in shadows, or he is looked upon as of unsound mind. We never had a sounder intelligence in this Republic. He was the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible. Where Washington performed Paine devised and wrote. The deeds of one in the Weld were matched by the deeds of the other with his pen. –The Philosophy of Thomas Paine, 1925

Ludwig von Mises: The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders.

Cicero: Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. Quid enim est aetas hominis, nisi ea memoria rerum veterum cum superiorum aetate contexitur? (Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a superior age?)

Dr. E: Read the Great Books as a rugged climber of the spirit’s highest, most treacherous peaks. For truly, they offer the greatest adventure and calling for the soul.

John Adams: I should as soon think of closing all my window-shutters to enable me to see, as of banishing the classics to improve Republican ideas.

Thomas Edison: I love great music and art, but I think ‘cubist’ songs and paintings are hideous.

Goethe: (Homer) was the most fruitful gardens of the kingdom of literature. (. . . Goethe thought profoundly about Homer. In the great congregation of Homer-enthusiasts he is perhaps the most striking in so far as he dared to compose Homeric poetry, something which, according to the theorists, should have been impossible.)
—Homer in German Classicism: Goethe, Friedrich Schlegel, Holderlin and Schelling, by JOACHM WOHLLEBEN

John Adams: Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

John C. Bogle: But even as I ask you, as I did my grandchildren in the dedication to Battle, to enlist in the mission of building a better world, I remain eager for the excitement of the chase; the idealism of a cause worth betting one’s life on; and the joy of honoring the values of the past as the key to a brilliant future. So dream your own dreams, but act on them, too. Action, always action, is required on the ever-dangerous odyssey that each of our lives must follow. Be good human beings. Respect tradition and study the great thinkers of our heritage. And not only hear me, but reflect, if you will, on what I’ve said this evening. – “Vanguard: Saga of Heroes” Remarks by John C. Bogle, Founder, The Vanguard Group Before Dr. Elliot McGucken’s Class in Artistic Entrepreneurship and Technology 101, Hero’s Odyssey Entrepreneurship Festival, Malibu, CA February 27, 2007

John Adams (in a letter to his son John Quincy Adams):
I want to have you upon Demosthenes. The plainer Authors you may learn yourself at any time. I absolutely insist upon it, that you begin upon Demosthenes and Cicero. I will not be put by. You may learn Greek from Demosthenes and Homer as well as Isocrates and Lucian—and Latin from Virgil and Cicero as well as from Phaedrus and Nepos. What should be the Cause of Aversion to Demosthenes in the World I know not, unless it is because his sentiments are wise and grand, and he teaches no frivolities. If there is no other Way, I will take you home and teach you Demosthenes and Homer myself.

Rodin: Let us force ourselves to understand the masters — let us love them — let us go to them for inspiration; but let us refrain from labeling them like drugs in a chemist’s shop.

Renoir: It is in the museum that one learns to paint.

Albert Einstein: Somebody who reads only newspapers and at best books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely near-sighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. And what a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous. There are only a few enlightened people with a lucid mind and style and with good taste within a century. What has been preserved of their work belongs among the most precious possessions of mankind. We owe it to a few writers of antiquity that the people of the Middle Ages could slowly extricate themselves from the superstitions and ignorance that had darkened life for more than half a milleniun. –Ideas and Opinions

Vincent Van Gogh: But my God, how beautiful Shakespeare is, who else is as mysterious as he is; his language and method are like a brush trembling with excitement and ecstasy. But one must learn to read, just as one must learn to see and learn to live.

Percy Bysshe Shelley: The poems of Homer and his contemporaries were the delight of infant Greece; they were the elements of that social system which is the column upon which all succeeding civilization has reposed. Homer embodied the ideal perfection of his age in human character; nor can we doubt that those who read his verses were awakened to an ambition of becoming like to Achilles, Hector, and Ulysses: the truth and beauty of friendship, patriotism, and persevering devotion to an object, were unveiled to the depths in these immortal creations: the sentiments of the auditors must have been refined and enlarged by a sympathy with such great and lovely impersonations, until from admiring they imitated, and from imitation they identified themselves with the objects of their admiration. Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): Defence of Poetry, 1819

Alexander Pope: Our author’s work is a wild paradise, where, if we cannot see all the beauties so distinctly as in an ordered garden, it is only because the number of them is infinitely greater. It is like a copious nursery, which contains the seeds and first productions of every kind, out of which those who followed him have but selected some particular plants, each according to his fancy, to cultivate and beautify. If some things are too luxuriant it is owing to the richness of the soil; and if others are not arrived to perfection or maturity, it is only because they are overrun and oppressed by those of a stronger nature.
Alexander Pope on The Iliad, 1727.

Aristotle: As, in the serious style, Homer is pre-eminent among poets, for he alone combined dramatic form with excellence of imitation so he too first laid down the main lines of comedy, by dramatizing the ludicrous instead of writing personal satire. . . Unity of plot does not, as some persons think, consist in the unity of the hero. For infinitely various are the incidents in one man’s life which cannot be reduced to unity; and so, too, there are many actions of one man out of which we cannot make one action. Hence the error, as it appears, of all poets who have composed a Heracleid, a Theseid, or other poems of the kind. They imagine that as Heracles was one man, the story of Heracles must also be a unity. But Homer, as in all else he is of surpassing merit, here too- whether from art or natural genius—seems to have happily discerned the truth. In composing the Odyssey he did not include all the adventures of Odysseus- such as his wound on Parnassus, or his feigned madness at the mustering of the host- incidents between which there was no necessary or probable connection: but he made the Odyssey, and likewise the Iliad, to center round an action that in our sense of the word is one. As therefore,
in the other imitative arts, the imitation is one when the object imitated is one, so the plot, being an imitation of an action, must imitate one action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference, is not an organic part of the whole. –Aristotle’s Poetics

Albert Einstein: The highest principles for our aspirations and judgements are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very inadequately, but which gives a sure foundation to our aspir ations and valuations. If one were to take that goal out of out of its religious form and look merely at its purely human side, one might state it perhaps thus: free and responsible development of the individual, so that he may place his powers freely and gladly in the service of all mankind. … it is only to the individual that a soul is given. And the high destiny of the individual is to serve rather than to rule, or to impose himself in any otherway. –Ideas and Opinions

Jack Bogle: In Enough. True Measures of Money, Business, and Life, I warn of too much cost and not enough value; too much speculation and not enough investment; too much complexity and not enough simplicity; too much counting and not enough trust; too much salesmanship and not enough stewardship; and so on; even too many 21st century values and not enough 18th century values—those values exemplified by the great philosophers of The Age of Reason—men such as Rousseau and Hume and Burke, and Adam Smith, and Tom Paine—who in turn helped shape the minds of our Founding Fathers—especially Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and Hamilton. And all of these men, in turn, stood on the shoulders of earlier giants such as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. (Some of them are likely quoted in the halls you walk here each day. Read their words! Think about them! Gain their wisdom!)
It is the values of these giants of Western Civilization that have inspired me—yes, as you well know, the dead teach the living (the motto on Roxbury Latin’s crest is mortui vivos docent—the dead teach the living)—to speak out on the ethical failings of so many of the leaders of our corporations and our money managers, our regulators and our legislators. What we refer to as Wall Street has become a casino, one in which enormous—but momentary—changes in short-term stock prices are treated as intrinsic reality, rather than ephemeral perception. Think about it. All of today’s frenetic trading simply pits one speculator against another, with the only winners being the croupiers—the traders, the brokers, the investment bankers, and the money managers who facilitate those trades. If that undeniable reality reminds you of gambling in Las Vegas, or going to the race track, or hoping to hit the jackpot in the state lottery, well, you see where I’m coming from.
The stock market casino has become a giant—and costly—distraction to the serious business of investing. Greed, recklessness, and self-interest ride in the saddle of today’s capitalism. . .
–http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/sp20090330.html

Henry David Thoreau: The student may read Homer or Aeschylus in the Greek without danger of dissipation or luxuriousness, for it implies that he in some measure emulate their heroes, and consecrate morning hours to their pages. The heroic books, even if printed in the character of our mother tongue, will always be in a language dead to degenerate times; and we must laboriously seek the meaning of each word and line, conjecturing a larger sense than common use permits out of what wisdom and valor and generosity we have. The modern cheap and fertile press, with all its translations, has done little to bring us nearer to the heroic writers of antiquity. They seem as solitary, and the letter in which they are printed as rare and curious, as ever. It is worth the expense of youthful days and costly hours, if you learn only some words of an ancient language, which are raised out of the trivialness of the street, to be perpetual suggestions and provocations. It is not in vain that the farmer remembers and repeats the few Latin words which he has heard. Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old. To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read. The one is commonly transitory, a sound, a tongue, a dialect merely, almost brutish, and we learn it unconsciously, like the brutes, of our mothers. . . No wonder that Alexander carried the Iliad with him on his expeditions in a precious casket. A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips;- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself. The symbol of an ancient man’s thought becomes a modern man’s speech. Two thousand summers have imparted to the monuments of Grecian literature, as to her marbles, only a maturer golden and autumnal tint, for they have carried their own serene and celestial atmosphere into all lands to protect them against the corrosion of time. Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage. They have no cause of their own to plead, but while they enlighten and sustain the reader his common sense will not refuse them. Their authors are a natural and irresistible aristocracy in every society, and, more than kings or emperors, exert an influence on mankind. When the illiterate and perhaps scornful trader has earned by enterprise and industry his coveted leisure and independence, and is admitted to the circles of wealth and fashion, he turns inevitably at last to those still higher but yet inaccessible circles of intellect and genius, and is sensible only of the imperfection of his culture and the vanity and insufficiency of all his riches, and further proves his good sense by the pains which be takes to secure for his children that intellectual culture whose want he so keenly feels; and thus it is that he becomes the founder of a family. . . The works of the great poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only great poets can read them. They have only been read as the multitude read the stars, at most astrologically, not astronomically. Most men have learned to read to serve a paltry convenience, as they have learned to cipher in order to keep accounts and not be cheated in trade; but of reading as a noble intellectual exercise they know little or nothing; yet this only is reading, in a high sense, not that which lulls us as a luxury and suffers the nobler faculties to sleep the while, but what we have to stand on tip-toe to read and devote our most alert and wakeful hours to. –Walden

John Keats: Oft in one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet never did I breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken.
—On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer, 1817.

Dante: Homer, the sovereign poet. –Divina Commedia

Victor Hugo: Homer is one of the men of genius who solve that fine problem of art—the finest of all, perhaps—truly to depict humanity by the enlargement of man: that is, to generate the real in the ideal. –William Shakespeare, Part II

Thomas Jefferson: A lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more effectually impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading King Lear, than by all the dry volumes of ethics, and divinity, that ever were written.

Dante: Let there be no doubt in the mind of the man who has benefited from the common heritage but does not trouble to contribute to the common good that he is failing sadly in his duty. –Monarchia 3

1887 NYT on Abrahm Lincoln: My friend went down and found the tall, smooth-shaved lawyer, to whose face, he says, no engravings or portraits do justice in its wonderful and expressive power. He was reading Homer’s Iliad, in a translation, of course. Lincoln held the book out at arm’s length after a word or two had passed, when he laughed and said: “I have made up my mind that I have got to read Homer’s Iliad,” and the quaint look which has become historical spread over his face. “You know a man might as well be out of the world as not read Homer’s Iliad.” –The Philadelphia Press, Abraham Lincoln: How He Read the Iliad, and His Fondness for Shakespeare, March 9th, 1887,

Thomas Jefferson: Shakespeare must be singled out by one who wishes to learn the full powers of the English language.

Dr. E: Hear the poets honor the Great one!
But Shakespear’s Magick could not copy’d be,
Within that Circle none durst walk but he.
John Dryden, The Tempest (1667), Prologue

Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third. –T. S. Eliot, “Dante” (1929), from Selected Essays (1932)

Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of SHAKSPEARE’s wit.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson in “Solution”, from May-Day and Other Pieces (1867)

He was not of an age, but for all time!
Ben Jonson, To the Memory of my Beloved, the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare (1623)
I never quite despair and I read Shakspeare — indeed I shall I think never read any other Book much […] I am very near Agreeing with Hazlit that Shakspeare is enough for us. –John Keats, in a letter to Benjamin Robert Haydon (11 May 1817)

He has left nothing to say about nothing or any thing.
John Keats, in a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds (22 November 1817)

At once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare posessed so enormously — I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason. –John Keats, in a letter to George and Tom Keats ([21/27?] December 1817)

John Keats: Shakespeare led a life of Allegory; his works are the comments on it. (in a letter to George and Georgiana Keats (19 February 1819)

Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world’s;
Therefore on him no speech!

Walter Savage Landor, “To Robert Browning,” published in The Morning Chronicle (1845-11-22); reprinted in The Works of Walter Savage Landor (1846), vol. II

When I read Shakespeare I am struck with wonder
That such trivial people should muse and thunder
In such lovely language.
D. H. Lawrence, “When I read Shakespeare,” from Pansies (1929)

Thomas Jefferson: I read one or two newspapers a week, but with reluctance give even that time from Tacitus and Homer and so much agreeable reading. . . I feel a much greater interest in knowing what has happened two or three thousand years ago than in what is now passing.

Dr. Carl J. Richards (in The Founders and The Classics, Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment): Through the use of Roman analogies, William Fairfax, Washington’s mentor and surrogate father, impressed upon him “that the greatest of all achievements was, through honorable deeds, to win the applause of one’s countrymen.” . . It was customary for guests at Belvoir, the Fairfax estate, to sign their names in a register, followed by a favorite Latin quotation. . . Although the founders always endorsed classical education on utilitarian grounds, they defined “utility” in the broadest possible manner. In addition to the writing models, knowledge, and ideas which the classics furnished, the founders contended that they were an indispensible training in virtue. John Adams lectured John Quincy: “I wish to hear of your beginning Sallust, who is one of the most polished and perfect of the Roman Historians, every Period of whom, and I had almost said every Syllable and every Letter, is worth Studying. In company with Sallust, Cicero, Tacitus, and Livy, you will learn Wisdom and Virtue. You will see them represented with all the Charms which Language and Imagination can exhibit, and Vice and Folly painted in all their Deformity and Horror. You will ever remember that all the End of study is to make you a good Man and a useful Citizen. . . The connection between the classics and virtue was deeply engrained and implicitly understood. In 1778 Adams wrote regarding Arthur Lee’s sons (including Richard Henry Lee): “Their father had given them all excellent classical educations, and they were all virtuous men.” To Adams, the causal relationship between the first fact and the second was too obvious to require explanation. Such a relationship could be assumed, since the stated purpose of most classical literature, including works of history, had always been to inculcate morality. Since the inculcation of a fixed moral code is not the expressed purpose of most modern literature (perhaps because there is no longer a consenus concerning morality), modern people would be perplexed by the statement, “They all study American history, and they are all virtous people.” But to the founders, the connection between classical training and virtue was clear.” –C. J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics, Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment, p. 37

Nicholas Nassim Taleb: This absence of literary culture is actually a marker of future blindness because it is usually accompanied by a denigration of history, a byproduct of unconditional neomania. Outside of the niche and isolated genre of science fiction, literature is about the past. We do not learn physics or biology from medieval textbooks, but we still read Homer, Plato, or the very modern Shakespeare. We cannot talk about sculpture without knowledge of the works of Phidias, Michelangelo, or the great Canova. These are in the past, not in the future. Just by setting foot into a museum, the aesthetically minded person is connecting with the elders. Whether overtly or not, he will tend to acquire and respect historical knowledge, even if it is to reject it. And the past— properly handled, as we will see in the next section— is a much better teacher about the properties of the future than the present. To understand the future, you do not need technoautistic jargon, obsession with “killer apps,” these sort of things. You just need the following: some respect for the past, some curiosity about the historical record, a hunger for the wisdom of the elders, and a grasp of the notion of “heuristics,” these often unwritten rules of thumb that are so determining of survival. In other words, you will be forced to give weight to things that have been around, things that have survived. –Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2012-11-27). Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (pp. 314-315). Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

C.J. Richard: College entrance requirements, which remained remarkably stable for almost two hundred years, mandated a basic knowledge of the classical languages. When John Winthrop’s nephew, George Downing, applied to Harvard in the mid-seventeenth century, he wa required to “understand Tully [Cicero], Viirgil, or any such classical authors, and readily to speak or write true Latin in prose and have skill in making Latin verse and be completely grounded in the Greek language.” When John Adams entered Harvard a century later, in the 1750s, Harvard demanded that he be able “extempore to read, construe, and parse Tully, Virgil, or such like common classical authors, and to write Latin in prose, and to be skilled in making Latin verse, or at least in the rules of the Prosodia, and to read, construe, and parse ordinary Greek, as in the New Testament, Isocrates, or such like, and decline the paradigms of Greek nouns and verbs.” In 1760, when John Jay entered King’ College (now Columbia), he was obliged to give a rational account of the Greek and Latin grammars, read three orations of Cicero and three books of Vrigil’s Aeneid, and translate the fist ten chapters of John into Latin. In 1774, when Alexander Hamilton chose King’s College over the College of New Jersey because Witherspoon refused to allow the impatient West Indain to move through his program at an accelerated pace, the Princteon entrance examination required “the ability to write Latin prose, translate Virgil, Cicero, and the Greek gospels, and a commensurate knowledge of Latin and Greek grammar.” Finally, in 1816, when Hoarace Mann applied for entrance to Brown University, he faced requirements which Downing would have been completely comfortable: the ability “To read accurately, construe, and parse Tully and the Greek Testament and Virgil . . .to write Latin in prose, and [to know] the rules of Prosody.” Colleges were interested in a candidate’s ability to read Latin and Greek and little else. –C.J. Richard, The Founders and the Classics, Greece, Rome, and the American Enlightenment, p. 19 (Today colleges are interested in a candidate’s ability to take on massive debt which can never be escaped from, not even by declaring bankruptcy, and little else, other than said candidate’s ability to quietly surrender to the deconstruction and debauchery of the culture and currency while going lzozzozzozlzlo.)

Finis Jennings Dake: In all His teachings, Jesus referred to the divine authority of the Old Testament (Mt. 5:17-18; 8:17; 12:40-42; Lk. 4:18-21; 10:25-28; 15:29-31; 17:32; 24:25-45; Jn. 5:39-47). He quoted the Old Testament 78 times, the Pentateuch alone 26 times. He quoted from Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Proverbs, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Amos, Jonah, Micah, and Malachi. He referred to the Old Testament as “The Scriptures,” “the word of God,” and “the wisdom of God.” The apostles quoted 209 times from the Old Testament and considered it “the oracles of God.” The Old Testament in hundreds of places predicted the events of the New Testament; and as the New Testament is the fulfillment of, and testifies to the genuineness and authenticity of the Old Testament, both Testaments must be considered together as the Word of God. –God’s Plan for Man

Dr. E: Socrates honored Homer in his final speech: “Someone will say: And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end? To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong – acting the part of a good man or of a bad. Whereas, according to your view, the heroes who fell at Troy were not good for much, and the son of Thetis above all, who altogether despised danger in comparison with disgrace; and when his goddess mother said to him, in his eagerness to slay Hector, that if he avenged his companion Patroclus, and slew Hector, he would die himself – “Fate,” as she said, “waits upon you next after Hector”; he, hearing this, utterly despised danger and death, and instead of fearing them, feared rather to live in dishonor, and not to avenge his friend. “Let me die next,” he replies, “and be avenged of my enemy, rather than abide here by the beaked ships, a scorn and a burden of the earth.” Had Achilles any thought of death and danger? For wherever a man’s place is, whether the place which he has chosen or that in which he has been placed by a commander, there he ought to remain in the hour of danger; he should not think of death or of anything, but of disgrace. And this, O men of Athens, is a true saying.” –Socrates’ Apology

“God grant that not only the love of liberty but a thorough knowledge of the rights of man may pervade all the nations of the earth, so that a philosopher may set his foot anywhere on its surface and say: This is my country.” –Benjamin Franklin

I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man. — Thomas Jefferson

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered…I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies… The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” –Thomas Jefferson

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. –Benjamin Franklin

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech. –Benjamin Franklin

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters. –Benjaimn Franklin

Men will ultimately be governed by God or by tyrants. –Benjamin Franklin

Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature. –Benjamin Franklin

This will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins. –Benjamin Franklin

“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” –Thomas Jefferson

“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” –Samuel Adams

“How all occasions do inform against me,” Hamlet notes, and our story opens the same way, as does Homer’s Odyssey, with our fathers missing, our estate and rightful inheritance being laid to waste by false suitors and kings, and our very own futures imperiled. “It is not, and it cannot come to good,” states Hamlet, and the Gods looking down from Mount Olympus agree. Caught in an era of fiat crossfire—a soulless era of deconstruction of the Constitution and debauchery of the culture and currency, of unaffordable fiat wars on foreign shores and fiat bubbles and bailouts orchestrated to convert mere debt into physical wealth, property, and power for those captaining the decline; caught in an epoch of epic, unprecedented divorce, abortion, growth of the state, and privatization of profits and socialization of risks—an era of overreaching empire, declining family and thus freedom, the exile of the classical, exalted soul and liberty’s Founding Principles across all realms, and the exaltation of the honorless and characterless—caught in this crossfire, I wanted to give the students something which no fiat statist could ever take away, nor devalue, nor deconstruct, nor debauch—a gift from Athena. Here is a revolver. It is your right to hold it, as set forth from the dawn of time and recognized by the Founding Fathers. It is a simple, black Colt .45, but legend has it, that if you have done the right thing—if you are doing the right thing—it will glow gold during that epic showdown and shoot Zeus’s Lightning, bringing on down Moses’ and Mises’ Thunder, as sure as Socrates states that no harm can befall a good man’s soul.http://gold45revolver.com

Literature is not conformism, but dissent. Those authors who merely repeat what everybody approves and wants to hear are of no importance. What counts alone is the innovator, the dissenter, the harbinger of things unheard of, the man who rejects the traditional standards and aims at substituting new values and ideas for old ones. He is by necessity anti-authoritarian and anti-governmental, irreconcilably opposed to the immense majority of his contemporaries. He is precisely the author whose books the greater part of the public does not buy.

Geniuses and prophets do not usually excel in professional learning, and their originality, if any, is often due precisely to the fact that they do not. Joseph Schumpeter: — Part I, Chapter III, pg.21

As a matter of fact, capitalist economy is not and cannot be stationary. Nor is it merely expanding in a steady manner. It is incessantly being revolutionized from within by new enterprise, i.e., by the intrusion of new commodities or new methods of production or new commercial opportunities into the industrial structure as it exists at any moment.

–Jospeh Schumpeter * Part I, Chapter III, pg.31

The opening up of new markets, foreign or domestic, and the organizational development from the craft shop and factory to such concerns as U. S. Steel illustrate the same process of industrial mutation-if I may use that biological term-that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one. This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism.

Entrepreneurial profit is the expression of the value of what the entrepreneur contributes to production. –Joseph A. Schumpeter

Ludwig von Mises In the long run even the most despotic governments with all their brutality and cruelty are no match for ideas. Eventually the ideology that has won the support of the majority will prevail and cut the ground from under the tyrants feet. Then the oppressed many will rise in rebellion and overthrow their masters. –Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History p. 372 Ideas

Ludwig von Mises: Thoughts and ideas are not phantoms. They are real things. Although intangible and immaterial, they are factors in bringing about changes in the realm of tangible and material things. Theory and History p. 96 Ideas

Ludwig von Mises: Everything that is thought, done and accomplished is a performance of individuals. New ideas and innovations are always an achievement of uncommon men. Human Action pp. 859-60; p. 863 Genius

Ludwig von Mises: Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. . . . The mark of the creative mind is that it defies a part of what it has learned or, at least, adds something new to it. Bureaucracy p. 71 Education

Ludwig von Mises: Action is purposive conduct. It is not simply behavior, but behavior begot by judgments of value, aiming at a definite end and guided by ideas concerning the suitability or unsuitability of definite means. . . . It is conscious behavior. It is choosing. It is volition; it is a display of the will. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science p. 34 Action

Ludwig von Mises: Not mythical material productive forces, but reason and ideas determine the course of human affairs. What is needed to stop the trend toward socialism and despotism is common-sense and moral courage. Planned Chaos p. 90 Socialism

Ludwig von Mises: Most men are accessible to new ideas only in their youth. With the progress of age the ability to welcome them diminishes, and the knowledge acquired earlier turns into dogma. Epistemological Problems of Economics p. 184 Youth

Entrepreneurship cannot be taught. But in no way does this mean there is nothing to teach in a class devoted to entrepreneurship. We must teach of liberty’s ideals and the precepts underlying our precious, exalted freedom. We must battle for the soul of capitalism; and this has ever been done best by those brave men who acquainted themselves with the classics’ immortal ideals in books written pages, and then took rugged action in rendeirng those ideals real in living ventures, as did our Founding Fathers.

Thus a class devoted to Entreprneurship–to the supposed bottom line– is actually a class devoted to the higher ideals. And so it is that I flipped the script on the modern university, by sneaking the Great Books back onto the debt-based campus in a Trojan Horse called The Hero’s Odyssey in Arts Entreprenuership & Technology.

“The stock exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail” –Joseph Schumpeter

“What warrants success in a fight for freedom and civilization is not merely material equipment but first of all the spirit that animates those handling the weapons. This heroic spirit cannot be bought by inflation.” –Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 469

“The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders.” –Ludwig von Mises

The great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law. –Hayek

We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a programme which seems neither a mere defence of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible.Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this has rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost. –F.A. Hayek, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (1967)

A society that does not recognise that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom. –F.A. Hayek

Keynes did not teach us how to perform the miracle . . . of turning a stone into bread, but the not at all miraculous procedure of eating the seed corn. –Ludwig von Mises, Planning for Freedom, p. 71 Keynes

A work of art is an attempt to experience the universe as a whole. One cannot analyze or dissect it into parts and comment on it without destroying its intrinsic character. –Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises The creative spirit innovates necessarily. It must press forward. It must destroy the old and set the new in its place.. Progress cannot be organized. –Ludwig von Mises, Socialism p. 167 Genius

One cannot organize or institutionalize the emergence of new ideas. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science Ludwig von Mises p. 129 Ideas

A nation cannot prosper if its members are not fully aware of the fact that what alone can improve their conditions is more and better production. And this can only be brought about by increased saving and capital accumulation. Planning for Freedom pp. 92-93 Material Well- Being –Ludwig von Mises

The general intellectual climate which this produces, the spirit of complete cynicism as regards truth which it engenders, the loss of the sense of even the meaning of truth, the disappearance of the spirit of independent inquiry…. Perhaps the most alarming fact is that contempt for intellectual liberty is not a thing which arises only once the totalitarian system is established but one which can be found everywhere among intellectuals who have embraced a collectivist faith and who are acclaimed as intellectual leaders even in countries still under a liberal regime. –F.A. Hayek

In the etatist state entrepreneurs are at the mercy of officialdom. Officials enjoy discretion to decide questions on which the existence of every firm depends. They are practically free to ruin any entrepreneur they want to. They had the power not only to silence these objectors but even to force them to contribute to the party funds of nationalism. –Mises

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. –Thomas Jefferson in 1802 in a letter to then Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin

The distinctive principle of Western social philosophy is individualism. –Mises

Individualism resulted in the fall of autocratic government, the establishment of democracy, the evolution of capitalism, technical improvements, and an unprecedented rise in standards of living. It substituted enlightenment for old superstitions, scientific methods of research for inveterate prejudices. –Mises

It was in the climate created by this capitalistic system of individualism that all the modern intellectual achievements thrived. — Mises

“The system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.” –F.A. Hayek

“Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.” –Ludwig Von Mises

“[Socialists] promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office.” –Ludwig Von Mises

If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization. –Ludwig von Mises, Government and Civil Society

“Economics deals with society’s fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.” –Ludwig von Mises

“Even more significant of the inherent weakness of the collectivist theories is the extraordinary paradox that from the assertion that society is in some sense more than merely the aggregate of all individuals their adherents regularly pass by a sort of intellectual somersault to the thesis that in order that the coherence of this larger entity be safeguarded it must be subjected to conscious control, that is, to the control of what in the last resort must be an individual mind. It thus comes about that in practice it is regularly the theoretical collectivist who extols individual reason and demands that all forces of society be made subject to the direction of a single mastermind, while it is the individualist who recognizes the limitations of the powers of individual reason and consequently advocates freedom as a means for the fullest development of the powers of the interindividual process.” –F.A. Hayek

“I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions. This is a belief deliberately maintained by the other side because if they admitted that the issue is not a scientific question, they would have to admit that their science is antiquated and that, in academic circles, it occupies the position of astrology and not one that has any justification for serious consideration in scientific discussion. It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide. Conversation at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C. (9 February 1978); published in A Conversation with Friedrich A. Von Hayek: Science and Socialism (1979)” –F.A. Hayek

“If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.” –F.A. Hayek, Nobel Lecture of December 11, 1974, The Pretence of Knowledge

Literature is not conformism, but dissent. Those authors who merely repeat what everybody approves and wants to hear are of no importance. What counts alone is the innovator, the dissenter, the harbinger of things unheard of, the man who rejects the traditional standards and aims at substituting new values and ideas for old ones. He is by necessity anti-authoritarian and anti-governmental, irreconcilably opposed to the immense majority of his contemporaries. He is precisely the author whose books the greater part of the public does not buy.

–The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality p. 51 Literature , Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises In the long run even the most despotic governments with all their brutality and cruelty are no match for ideas. Eventually the ideology that has won the support of the majority will prevail and cut the ground from under the tyrants feet. Then the oppressed many will rise in rebellion and overthrow their masters. –Ludwig von Mises, Theory and History p. 372 Ideas

Ludwig von Mises: Thoughts and ideas are not phantoms. They are real things. Although intangible and immaterial, they are factors in bringing about changes in the realm of tangible and material things. Theory and History p. 96 Ideas

Ludwig von Mises: Everything that is thought, done and accomplished is a performance of individuals. New ideas and innovations are always an achievement of uncommon men. Human Action pp. 859-60; p. 863 Genius

Ludwig von Mises: Education rears disciples, imitators, and routinists, not pioneers of new ideas and creative geniuses. . . . The mark of the creative mind is that it defies a part of what it has learned or, at least, adds something new to it. Bureaucracy p. 71 Education

Ludwig von Mises: Action is purposive conduct. It is not simply behavior, but behavior begot by judgments of value, aiming at a definite end and guided by ideas concerning the suitability or unsuitability of definite means. . . . It is conscious behavior. It is choosing. It is volition; it is a display of the will. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science p. 34 Action

Ludwig von Mises: Not mythical material productive forces, but reason and ideas determine the course of human affairs. What is needed to stop the trend toward socialism and despotism is common-sense and moral courage. Planned Chaos p. 90 Socialism

Ludwig von Mises: Most men are accessible to new ideas only in their youth. With the progress of age the ability to welcome them diminishes, and the knowledge acquired earlier turns into dogma. Epistemological Problems of Economics p. 184 Youth

Entrepreneurship cannot be taught. But in no way does this mean there is nothing to teach in a class devoted to entrepreneurship. We must teach of liberty’s ideals and the precepts underlying our precious, exalted freedom. We must battle for the soul of capitalism; and this has ever been done best by those brave men who acquainted themselves with the classics’ immortal ideals in books written pages, and then took rugged action in rendeirng those ideals real in living ventures, as did our Founding Fathers.

Thus a class devoted to Entreprneurship–to the supposed bottom line– is actually a class devoted to the higher ideals. And so it is that I flipped the script on the modern university, by sneaking the Great Books back onto the debt-based campus in a Trojan Horse called The Hero’s Odyssey in Arts Entreprenuership & Technology.

“The stock exchange is a poor substitute for the Holy Grail” –Joseph Schumpeter

“What warrants success in a fight for freedom and civilization is not merely material equipment but first of all the spirit that animates those handling the weapons. This heroic spirit cannot be bought by inflation.” –Ludwig von Mises, The Theory of Money and Credit, p. 469

“The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders.” –Ludwig von Mises

The great aim of the struggle for liberty has been equality before the law. –Hayek

We must make the building of a free society once more an intellectual adventure, a deed of courage. What we lack is a liberal Utopia, a programme which seems neither a mere defence of things as they are nor a diluted kind of socialism, but a truly liberal radicalism which does not spare the susceptibilities of the mighty (including the trade unions), which is not too severely practical and which does not confine itself to what appears today as politically possible.Those who have concerned themselves exclusively with what seemed practicable in the existing state of opinion have constantly found that even this has rapidly become politically impossible as the result of changes in a public opinion which they have done nothing to guide. Unless we can make the philosophic foundations of a free society once more a living intellectual issue, and its implementation a task which challenges the ingenuity and imagination of our liveliest minds, the prospects of freedom are indeed dark. But if we can regain that belief in power of ideas which was the mark of liberalism at its best, the battle is not lost. –F.A. Hayek, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (1967)

A society that does not recognise that each individual has values of his own which he is entitled to follow can have no respect for the dignity of the individual and cannot really know freedom. –F.A. Hayek

Keynes did not teach us how to perform the miracle . . . of turning a stone into bread, but the not at all miraculous procedure of eating the seed corn. –Ludwig von Mises, Planning for Freedom, p. 71 Keynes

A work of art is an attempt to experience the universe as a whole. One cannot analyze or dissect it into parts and comment on it without destroying its intrinsic character. –Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises The creative spirit innovates necessarily. It must press forward. It must destroy the old and set the new in its place.. Progress cannot be organized. –Ludwig von Mises, Socialism p. 167 Genius

One cannot organize or institutionalize the emergence of new ideas. The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science Ludwig von Mises p. 129 Ideas

A nation cannot prosper if its members are not fully aware of the fact that what alone can improve their conditions is more and better production. And this can only be brought about by increased saving and capital accumulation. Planning for Freedom pp. 92-93 Material Well- Being –Ludwig von Mises

The general intellectual climate which this produces, the spirit of complete cynicism as regards truth which it engenders, the loss of the sense of even the meaning of truth, the disappearance of the spirit of independent inquiry…. Perhaps the most alarming fact is that contempt for intellectual liberty is not a thing which arises only once the totalitarian system is established but one which can be found everywhere among intellectuals who have embraced a collectivist faith and who are acclaimed as intellectual leaders even in countries still under a liberal regime. –F.A. Hayek

In the etatist state entrepreneurs are at the mercy of officialdom. Officials enjoy discretion to decide questions on which the existence of every firm depends. They are practically free to ruin any entrepreneur they want to. They had the power not only to silence these objectors but even to force them to contribute to the party funds of nationalism. –Mises

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. –Thomas Jefferson in 1802 in a letter to then Secretary of the Treasury, Albert Gallatin

The distinctive principle of Western social philosophy is individualism. –Mises

Individualism resulted in the fall of autocratic government, the establishment of democracy, the evolution of capitalism, technical improvements, and an unprecedented rise in standards of living. It substituted enlightenment for old superstitions, scientific methods of research for inveterate prejudices. –Mises

It was in the climate created by this capitalistic system of individualism that all the modern intellectual achievements thrived. – Mises

“The system of private property is the most important guarantee of freedom, not only for those who own property, but scarcely less for those who do not.” –F.A. Hayek

“Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.” –Ludwig Von Mises

“[Socialists] promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office.” –Ludwig Von Mises

If history could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization. –Ludwig von Mises, Government and Civil Society

“Economics deals with society’s fundamental problems; it concerns everyone and belongs to all. It is the main and proper study of every citizen.” –Ludwig von Mises

“Even more significant of the inherent weakness of the collectivist theories is the extraordinary paradox that from the assertion that society is in some sense more than merely the aggregate of all individuals their adherents regularly pass by a sort of intellectual somersault to the thesis that in order that the coherence of this larger entity be safeguarded it must be subjected to conscious control, that is, to the control of what in the last resort must be an individual mind. It thus comes about that in practice it is regularly the theoretical collectivist who extols individual reason and demands that all forces of society be made subject to the direction of a single mastermind, while it is the individualist who recognizes the limitations of the powers of individual reason and consequently advocates freedom as a means for the fullest development of the powers of the interindividual process.” –F.A. Hayek

“I have arrived at the conviction that the neglect by economists to discuss seriously what is really the crucial problem of our time is due to a certain timidity about soiling their hands by going from purely scientific questions into value questions. This is a belief deliberately maintained by the other side because if they admitted that the issue is not a scientific question, they would have to admit that their science is antiquated and that, in academic circles, it occupies the position of astrology and not one that has any justification for serious consideration in scientific discussion. It seems to me that socialists today can preserve their position in academic economics merely by the pretense that the differences are entirely moral questions about which science cannot decide. Conversation at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, D.C. (9 February 1978); published in A Conversation with Friedrich A. Von Hayek: Science and Socialism (1979)” –F.A. Hayek

“If man is not to do more harm than good in his efforts to improve the social order, he will have to learn that in this, as in all other fields where essential complexity of an organized kind prevails, he cannot acquire the full knowledge which would make mastery of the events possible. He will therefore have to use what knowledge he can achieve, not to shape the results as the craftsman shapes his handiwork, but rather to cultivate a growth by providing the appropriate environment, in the manner in which the gardener does this for his plants.” –F.A. Hayek, Nobel Lecture of December 11, 1974, The Pretence of Knowledge

“Dr. E” received a B.A. in physics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in physics from UNC Chapel Hill, where his research on an artificial retina, which is now helping the blind see, appeared in Business Week and Popular Science and was awarded a Merrill Lynch Innovations Grant. While at Princeton, McGucken worked on projects concerning quantum mechanics and general relativity with the late John Wheeler, and the projects combined to form an appendix treating time as an emergent phenomenon in his dissertation. McGucken is writing a book for the Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology (artsentrepreneurship.com) curriculum he created.

“More intellectual curiosity, versatility and yen for physics than Elliot McGucken’s I have never seen in any senior or graduate student. . . Originality, powerful motivation, and a can-do spirit make me think that McGucken is a top bet for graduate school in physics. . . I say this on the basis of close contacts with him over the past year and a half. . . I gave him as an independent task to figure out the time factor in the standard Schwarzchild expression around a spherically symmetric center of attraction. I gave him the proofs of my new general-audience, calculus-free book on general relativity, A Journey Into Gravity and Space Time. There the space part of the Schwarzchild geometric is worked out by purely geometric methods. “Can you, by poor-man’s reasoning, derive what I never have, the time part?” He could and did, and wrote it all up in a beautifully clear account. . . .his second junior paper . . .entitled Within a Context, was done with another advisor, and dealt with an entirely different part of physics, the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky experiment and delayed choice experiments in general. . . this paper was so outstanding. . . I am absolutely delighted that this semester McGucken is doing a project with the cyclotron group on time reversal asymmetry. Electronics, machine-shop work and making equipment function are things in which he now revels. But he revels in Shakespeare, too. Acting the part of Prospero in the Tempest. . . ” –John Archibald Wheeler, Princeton University, Recommendation for Elliot McGucken for Admission to Graduate School of Physics

“(Wheeler) had been the last notable figure from the heroic age of physics lingering among us — a man who could claim to be the student of Bohr, teacher of Feynman, and close colleague of Einstein.” –Colby Cosh, network.nationalpost.com

The above ad hominem attack from Yokanise, who seems to be part of the Sean Carroll “wormhole/baby universe/multiverse/scrambled-egg = big bang” bookselling camp constitute gross libel and defamation, which seems to be par for the Carrollian course.

At any rate, here are two excellent papers I have come across regarding MDT:

TOPIC: Time as an Emergent Phenomenon: Traveling Back to the Heroic Age of Physics by Elliot McGucken [refresh]

Elliot McGucken wrote on Aug. 25, 2008 @ 18:38 GMT Essay Abstract

In his 1912 Manuscript on Relativity, Einstein never stated that time is the fourth dimension, but rather he wrote x4 = ict. The fourth dimension is not time, but ict. Despite this, prominent physicists have oft equated time and the fourth dimension, leading to un-resolvable paradoxes and confusion regarding time’s physical nature, as physicists mistakenly projected properties of the three spatial dimensions onto a time dimension, resulting in curious concepts including frozen time and block universes in which the past and future are omni-present, thusly denying free will, while implying the possibility of time travel into the past, which visitors from the future have yet to verify. Beginning with the postulate that time is an emergent phenomenon resulting from a fourth dimension expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, diverse phenomena from relativity, quantum mechanics, and statistical mechanics are accounted for. Time dilation, the equivalence of mass and energy, nonlocality, wave-particle duality, and entropy are shown to arise from a common, deeper physical reality expressed with dx4/dt=ic. This postulate and equation, from which Einstein’s relativity is derived, presents a fundamental model accounting for the emergence of time, the constant velocity of light, the fact that the maximum velocity is c, and the fact that c is independent of the velocity of the source, as photons are but matter surfing a fourth expanding dimension. In general relativity, Einstein showed that the dimensions themselves could bend, curve, and move. The present theory extends this principle, postulating that the fourth dimension is moving independently of the three spatial dimensions, distributing locality and fathering time. This physical model underlies and accounts for time in quantum mechanics, relativity, and statistical mechanics, as well as entropy, the universe’s expansion, and time’s arrows.

Author Bio

“Dr. E” received a B.A. in physics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in physics from UNC Chapel Hill, where his research on an artificial retina, which is now helping the blind see, appeared in Business Week and Popular Science and was awarded a Merrill Lynch Innovations Grant. While at Princeton, McGucken worked on projects concerning quantum mechanics and general relativity with the late John Wheeler, and the projects combined to form an appendix treating time as an emergent phenomenon in his dissertation. McGucken is writing a book for the Artistic Entrepreneurship & Technology (artsentrepreneurship.com) curriculum he created.

Over the past few decades prominent physicists have noted that physics has diverged away from its heroic journey defined by boldly describing, fathoming, and characterizing foundational truths of physical reality via simple, elegant, logically-consistent postulates and equations humbling themselves before empirical reality. Herein the spirit of physics is again exalted by the heroic words of the Greats—by Galileo, Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Planck, Einstein, Bohr, and Schrodinger—the Founding Fathers upon whose shoulders physics stands. And from that pinnacle, a novel physical theory is proposed, complete with a novel physical model celebrating a hitherto unsung universal invariant and an equation reflecting the foundational physical reality of a fourth dimension expanding relative to the three spatial dimensions at the rate of c, or dx4/dt=ic, providing both the “elementary foundations” for relativity and QM’s “characteristic trait”—entanglement, and its nonlocal, probabilistic nature. From MDT’s experimentally-verified equation relativity is derived while time is unfrozen and free will exalted, while a physical model accounting for quantum nonlocality is presented. Entropy, Huygens’ Principle; the wave/particle, energy/mass, space/time, and E/B dualities; and time and all its arrows and asymmetries emerge from a common, foundational physical model. MDT exalts Einstein’s “empirical facts,” “naturalness,” and “logical simplicity.” For the first time in the history of relativity, change is woven into the fabric of space-time, and the timeless, ageless, nonlocal photon of Galileo’s/Einstein’s “empirical world” is explained via a foundational physical model, alongside the fact that c is both constant and the maximum velocity in the universe. The empirical GPS clocks’ time dilation/twins paradox is resolved by proposing a frame of absolute rest—the three spatial dimensions, and a frame of absolute motion—the fourth expanding dimension upon which ageless photons of zero rest mass surf; which underlie and give rise to Einstein’s Principle of Relativity.

The key to 45SURF photography is that I always see every model as a classic, epic goddess. What defines beauty? She does, and my job is to try and catch that definition as best I can—the classical angles and archetypes. “Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur michi,” was how Dante put it. “Here is one greater than me who inspires me,” and all art must be approached with great humility and respect for the subject.

The 45SURF philosophy is that the most exalted beauty is the free, fun, and natural beauty, which is what we shoot for out there. High tide or low tide, cloudy or sunny, or morning, noon, or night—the beach is the world’s greatest studio.

Elliot McGucken decided to straddle the two worlds. After he earned a doctoral degree in physics/electrical engineering, Dr. McGucken considered himself “fortunate” to get a teaching job at Davidson College in Davidson, N.C., and to continue his engineering research.

But then, last year, he won the Innovation Grants Competition sponsored by Merrill Lynch Forum (for an artificial retina chipset for the blind), the virtual think tank of the financial-services company. The contest, now in its second year, gives out $150,000 in prizes for Ph.D.s, and their institutions, who find commercial applications for their research.

After winning the contest, he got to tour the New York Stock Exchange. Dr. McGucken caught the entrepreneurial bug. Eventually, he launched jollyroger.com, an Internet company devoted to his longtime passions: writing and classical literature. —The Wall Street Journal

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination. –Carl Jung

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values—that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control. –Martin Luther King Jr.